by Gene Wolfe
“You’re a Martian,” Jeff told him firmly. “I am too. You call us Sols or Earthmen or something, and most of my folks were Navahos. But I’m Martian, just like you.”
“Thanks. Only we get attached to places, you know? We’re like cats. I hatched in this town. I grew up here. As long as I can stay, I’m not going.”
“There’s food in the store. Canned and dried stuff, a lot of it. I’ll leave you the key. You can look after it for me.”
Zaa took a deep breath, filling a chest thicker even than Jeff’s with thin Martian air that they had made. “You said we’d added to the mass with our air. Made more gravity. Only we didn’t. The nitrogen’s from the rock we dig and crush. You know that. The oxygen’s from splitting water. Fossil water from underground. Sure, we bring stuff from Earth, but it doesn’t amount to shit. We’ve still got the same gravity we always did.”
“I guess I wasn’t thinking,” Jeff conceded.
“You were thinking. You were scraping up any kind of an argument you could to make yourself think they weren’t going to shut us down. To make me think that too.”
Jeff looked at his watch.
“It’s a long time yet.”
“Sure.”
He pressed the combination on the keypad—nine, nine, two, five, seven, seven. You could not leave the door of the Administration Building open; an alarm would sound.
“What’s that?” Zaa caught his arm.
It was a voice from deep inside the building. Zaa leaped away with Jeff after him, long bounds carrying them the length of the corridor and up the stair.
“Mr. Shonto? Administrator Shonto?”
“Here I am!” Panting, Jeff spoke as loudly as he could. “I’m coming!”
Undersecretary R. Lowell Bensen, almost in person, was seated in the holoconference theater; in that dim light, he looked fully as real as Zaa.
“Ah, there you are.” He smiled; and Jeff, who was superstitious about smiles, winced inwardly.
“Leem, too. Good. Good! I realized you two might be busy elsewhere, but good God, twenty-four fifteen. A time convenient for us, a convenient time to get you two out of bed. Believe me, the Department treats me like that too. Fourteen hours on a good day, twice around the clock on the bad ones. How are things in Grand Canal?”
“Quiet,” Jeff said. “The plant’s running at fifteen percent, per instructions. We’ve got a weak hydraulic pump on Number One Crusher, so we’re running Number Two.” All this would have been on the printout Bensen had undoubtedly read before making his call, but it would be impolite to mention it. “Zaa Leem here is making oversized rings and a new piston for that pump while we wait for a new one.” Not in the least intending to do it, Jeff gulped. “We’re afraid we may not get a new pump, sir, and we want to be capable of one hundred percent whenever you need us.”
Bensen nodded, and Jeff turned to Zaa. “How are those new parts coming, Leem?”
“Just have to be installed, sir.”
“You two are the entire staff of the Grand Canal plant now? You don’t even have a secretary? That came up during our meeting.”
Jeff said, “That’s right, sir.”
“But there’s a town there, isn’t there? Grand Canal City or some such? A place where you can hire more staff when you need them?”
Here it came. Jeff’s mouth felt so dry that he could scarcely speak. “There is a town, Mr. Bensen. You’re right about that, sir. But I couldn’t hire more personnel there. Nobody’s left besides—besides ourselves, sir. Leem and me.”
Bensen looked troubled. “A ghost town, is it?”
Zaa spoke up, surprising Jeff. “It was a tourist town, Mr. Bensen. That’s why my family moved here. People wanted to see aliens back then, and talk to some, and they’d buy our art to do it. Now—well, sir, when my folks came to the Sol system, it took them two sidereal years just to get here. You know how it is these days, sir. Where’d you take your last vacation?”
“Isis, a lovely world. I see what you mean.”
“The Department pays me pretty well, sir, and I save my money, most of it. My boss here wants me to go off to our home planet, where there are a lot more people like me. He says I ought to buy a ticket, whenever I’ve got the money, just to have a look at it.”
Bensen frowned. “We’d hate to lose you, Leem.”
“You’re not going to, Mr. Bensen. I’ve got the money now, and more besides. But I don’t speak the language or know the customs, and if I did I wouldn’t like them. Do you like aliens, sir?”
“I don’t dislike them.”
“That’s exactly how I feel, sir. Nobody comes to Grand Canal anymore, sir. Why should they? It’s just more Mars, and they live here already. Me and Mr. Shonto, we work here, and we think our work’s important. So we stay. Only there’s nobody else.”
For a moment no one spoke.
“This came up in our meeting, too.” Bensen cleared his throat, and suddenly Jeff understood that Bensen felt almost as embarrassed and selfconscious as he had. “Betty Collins told us Grand Canal had become a ghost town, but I wanted to make sure.”
“It is,” Jeff muttered. “If you’re going to shut down our plant, sir, I can draw up a plan—”
Bensen was shaking his head. “How many security bots have you got, Shonto?”
“None, sir.”
“None?”
“No, sir. We had human guards, sir. The Plant Police. They were the only police in Grand Canal, actually. They were laid off one by one. I reported it—or my predecessor and I did, sir, I ought to say.”
Bensen sighed. “I didn’t see your reports. I wish I had. You’re in some danger, I’m afraid, you and Leem.”
“Really, sir?”
“Yes. Terrorists have been threatening to wreck the plants. Give in to their demands, or everyone suffocates. You know the kind of thing. Did you see it on vid?”
Jeff shook his head. “I don’t watch much, sir. Maybe not as much as I should.”
Bensen sighed again. “One of the news shows got hold of it and ran it. Just one show. After that, we persuaded them to keep a lid on it. That kind of publicity just plays into the terrorists’ hands.”
For a moment he was silent again, seeming to collect his thoughts; Zaa squirmed uncomfortably.
“Out there where you are, you’re safer than any of the others. Still, you ought to have security. You get supplies each thirty-day?”
Jeff shook his head again. “Every other thirty-day, sir.”
“I see. I’m going to change that. A supply crawler will come around every thirty-day from now on. I’ll see to it that the next one carries that new pump.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But you’ll be getting a special resupply as quickly as I can arrange it. Security bots. Twenty, if I can scrape that many together. Whatever I can send.”
Jeff began to thank him again, but Benson cut him off. “It may take a while. Weeks. Until you get them, you’ll have to be on guard every moment. You’re running at fifteen percent, you said. Could you up that to twenty-five?”
“Yes, sir. To one hundred within a few days.”
“Good. Good! Make it twenty-five now, and let us know if you run into any problems.”
Abruptly, Bensen was gone. Jeff looked at Zaa, and Zaa looked at Jeff. Both grinned.
At last Jeff managed to say, “They’re not shutting us down. Not yet anyhow.”
Zaa rose, two-legging and seeming as tall as the main cooling stack. “These terrorists have them pissing in their pants, Jeff. Pissing in their pants! We’re their ace in the hole. There’s nobody out here but us.”
“It’ll blow over.” Jeff found he was still grinning. “It’s bound to, in a year or two. Meanwhile we better get Number One back on line.”
They did, and when they had finished, Zaa snatched up a push broom, holding it with his right hand and his right intermediate foot as if it were a two-handed sword. “Defend yourself, Earther!”
Jeff backed away hurriedl
y until Zaa tossed him a mop, shouting, “They can mark your lonely grave with this!”
“Die, alien scum!” Jeff made a long thrust that Zaa parried just in time. “I rid the spaceways of their filth today!” Insulting the opponent had always been one of the best parts of their battles.
This one was furious. Jeff was smaller and not quite so strong. Zaa was slower; and though his visual field was larger, he lacked the binocular vision that let Jeff judge distances.
Even so, he prevailed in the end, driving Jeff through an open door and into the outdoor storage park, where after more furious fighting he slipped on the coarse red gravel and fell laughing and panting with the handle of Zaa’s push broom at his throat.
“Man, that was fun!” He dropped his mop and held up his hands to indicate surrender. “How long since we did this?”
Zaa considered as he helped him up. “Ten years, maybe.”
“Way too long!”
“Sure.” Sharp claws scratched Zaa’s scaly chin. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. We always wanted real swords, remember?”
As a boy, Jeff would have traded everything he owned for a real sword; the spot had been touched, and he found that there was still—still!—a little, wailing ghost of his old desire.
“We could make swords,” Zaa said. “Real swords. I could and you could help.” Abruptly, he seemed to overflow with enthusiasm. “This rock’s got a lot of iron in it. We could smelt it, make a crucible somehow. Make steel. I’d hammer it out—”
He dissolved in laughter beneath Jeff’s stare. “Just kidding. But, hey, I got some high-carbon steel strip that would do for blades. I could grind one in an hour or so, and I could make hilts out of brass bar stock, spruce them up with filework, and fasten them on with epoxy.”
Though mightily tempted, Jeff muttered, “It’s Department property, Zaa.”
Zaa laid a large, clawed hand upon his shoulder. “Boss boy, you fail to understand. We’re arming ourselves. What if the terrorists get here before the security bots do?”
The idea swept over Jeff like the west wind in the Mare Erythraeum, carrying him along like so much dust. “How come I’m the administrator and you’re the maintenance guy?”
“Simple. You’re not smart enough for maintenance. Tomorrow?”
“Sure. And we’ll have to practice with them a little before we get them sharp, right? It won’t be enough to have them, we have to know how to use them, and that would be too dangerous if they had sharp edges and points.”
“It’s going to be dangerous anyhow,” Zaa told him thoughtfully, “but we can wear safety helmets with face shields, and I’ll make us some real shields, too.”
The shields required more work than the swords, because Zaa covered their welded aluminum frames with densely woven plastic-coated wire, and wove a flattering portrait of Diane Seyn (whom he had won in battle long ago) into his, and an imagined picture of such a woman as he thought Jeff might like into Jeff’s.
Although the shields had taken a full day each, both swords and shields were ready in under a week, and the fight that followed—the most epic of all their epic battles—ranged from the boarded-up bungalows of Grand Canal to the lip of the Grand Canal itself, a setting so dramatic that each was nearly persuaded to kill the other, driving him over the edge to fall—a living meteor—to his death tens of thousands of feet below. The pure poetry of the thing seemed almost worth a life, as long as it was not one’s own.
Neither did, of course. But an orthopter taped them as it shot footage for a special called Haunted Mars. And among the tens of billions on Earth who watched a few seconds of their duel were women who took note of their shields and understood.
From the Cradle
A woman hath nine lives like a cat.
—JOHN HEYWOOD
The boy’s name was Michael, but his father called him Mike. His mother called him Mickey, and his teacher (who was both humorous and devout) The Burning Bush in her thoughts and Mick when she called on him in class. His principal said “that redheaded boy,” a memory for boys’ names not being among his principal accomplishments.
He was in back straightening up a shelf, tickling Eppie Graph (at which Eppie smiled and purred), and looking for another book as good as Starfighters of the Combined Fleets when the old lady came in. She wore a navy-blue suit and shiny black shoes with heels not quite so high as his mother’s, and a big gray coat that looked warm; but none of those things were of interest to Michael just then. What was of interest was the bag she carried, which was old and large and real leather, bound all the way around with straps, and plainly heavy. She tried to lift it onto the counter to show Mr. Browne, but could not raise it that high until Michael helped her, scrooching down and pushing up on the bottom.
She thanked him and smiled at him; and though her hair was white, she had the brightest blue eyes he had ever seen; her smile seemed to last a long time, but not long enough. When it was over she unbuckled the straps, big black ones that made Michael think of horses. He stood up very straight then, trying hard to look like a grownup nobody would even think of chasing away.
From her big leather bag, she took a book of ordinary size with a dark brown cover and light brown pages. Unlike real books, it seemed to have no pictures; but there was a great deal of writing on all the pages; and Michael was at that age at which one begins to think that it might be better if there were fewer pictures after all, and more print.
Mr. Browne whistled.
The lady nodded. “Yes, it’s very old.”
“You don’t want me,” Mr. Browne said slowly. He fingered the pages in a way that said he was afraid she would tell him not to. “I’d try Kalmenoff and Whitechapel.”
“I have,” she said. “They don’t want it. Not on the only terms I could offer it. Don’t you want it either?”
“I don’t know your terms.” Mr. Browne hesitated. “But no, I don’t. It’s not the sort of thing I handle. I’d want to give you a fair price.” He stopped talking to rub his jaw. “I’d have to borrow most of it, and it might be years before I found a buyer.”
The lady had money in her hand, although Michael was not sure she had taken it from a purse or pocket. It might have been in the black leather bag with the brown book.
“This is for you,” she said. She laid it on the counter. “So you’ll want it. On my terms.”
Mr. Browne looked at it, and blinked, and looked again. And after Michael had just about decided that he was not going to talk anymore, he said, “What are your terms?”
“This old book”—he had shut it, and she tapped the scuffed brown cover with a long fingernail as she spoke—“was my late husband’s most prized possession. He loved it.”
“I understand,” Mr. Browne said. “I’m something of a collector myself, in a much smaller way.”
“And it loved him. He said it did.” The lady’s voice fell. “He wasn’t making a joke. Oh, yes, he made jokes often. But this wasn’t one of them. We were married for almost fifty years. Trust me, I knew when he was serious.”
Mr. Browne nodded. “I’m sure you did.”
“He told me that if he died—he was in some danger for years, you understand. He wasn’t morbid about it, but he was realistic. We both were. We’d talked about the things that might happen, and what I ought to do if they did.”
Mr. Browne said he was sure that had been wise.
“Take the money. Now. I mean it. It’s your money, and I don’t like seeing it lying there.”
Mr. Browne did.
“He said that if he died, I was to put this book up for sale. He said that it would choose its new owner, and that I was to trust its judgment.” She hesitated. “He didn’t say how I was to put it up. I’ve thought of running ads on vid, but there would be a thousand cranks.”
Mr. Browne nodded, though Michael was not sure that he agreed.
“So I thought I’d better enlist the help of a dealer—someone who has a shop and can display it. Someone like you. My name’s Caitlin Hi
ggins. Here’s a card for your terminal.”
A little too late Mr. Browne nodded again, his head not moving much.
“Only you must warn them I might not sell. It will tell me when the right one comes along.” Caitlin Higgins bit her lips in a way that made Michael sorry for her. “Or I hope it will,” she said.
When she had gone, Mr. Browne put the brown book, open, in the window farthest from the door, with a sign that he had made over it. And when Mr. Browne (after half a dozen nervous glances at the book) had gone as well—gone into his office above the shop—Michael went out into the street and read the sign:
INCUNABULUM
On Consignment
Make Offer
It stood open, as has been said, upon a small stand that looked very much like real wood; and Michael was happy to see that it was open to a story.
THE TALE OF THE DWARF AND THE CHILDREN OF THE SPHINX
A certain dwarf who wandered from place to place, at times begging and at others stealing, was driven forth from the last, a town that beholds the desert and is itself beheld by mountains far away. Not daring to return until the wrath of the townsfolk had abated, he walked very far, and when night stole over the land taking far more than he ever had, he laid himself down upon the sand and slept.
In dream, he was a tall young man, and handsome, and owned five fine fields of barley and three of millet. For long hours of the night he walked among them, seeing barley as high as his waist and millet higher even than the lofty stature that sleep had bestowed upon him.
Chancing to look toward the desert, he beheld with alarm a great spinning wind that drew sand and stones up by its force, and so had become visible, a wind that moaned and roared as it rushed toward him. His first thought was to conceal himself; but he soon noticed that it grew smaller as it advanced, so that when it reached him it scarcely exceeded his own height.
For a moment only it stood before him. Dust, sand, and stones fell to the ground, revealing a beautiful young woman, naked save for her hair. “You must force me,” this woman said to him. “We yield only when forced.” In his dream he seized her, smothered her with kisses, and bestowed his love upon her while she writhed in ecstasy—not once, not twice, but three times.