by Gene Wolfe
“You said you wrote mysteries.” There was a half smile now. “Did you ever write one like this?”
“Absolutely not, nor am I spinning one now. If anyone can be said to be spinning anything, it’s Dr. Fevre.” I paused in case she had a question, then posed one of my own. “Have you decided?”
“No. I take it we’re going off to look for him in this boat you mentioned.”
“We are. That will be Mrs. Fevre, the Fevres’ daughter Chandra, and me. I’d like to have you along as well. It will be a cold voyage in winter, and we may end up somewhere in the arctic. There will be carefully rationed food prepared by the boat’s galley, freezing winds, and rough seas. I won’t lie to you about this.”
“We did seal, we did seal…” Singsong, so soft that I could scarcely make out the words. I pretended that I had heard nothing. After a moment Audrey halted her song to say, “I once crossed the Irish Sea in a sailing canoe, Ern. Did you know that?”
It had been in the author’s write-up at the end of The Boats of the Yerba Buena; I nodded and said, “Tell me about it.”
“I did, it took five days; and when it was finally over I swore I’d never do anything like that again. This isn’t like that.”
I nodded again.
“For one thing I had a support boat that always kept me in sight. If my canoe had capsized, I would’ve had a chance of rescue—a slim chance, but a real one. Will we have a support boat?”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid not.”
“I didn’t think so. May I ask why we want the Three Sisters?”
“You may, and I’ll be glad to explain everything as soon as we have you checked out.”
“Over rum and pineapple juice, Mr. Smithe?”
She had guessed I had money; knowing that made me grin. “You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Hopkins. All right, if you know where we can get them.”
I screened Chandra after that. She had been asleep and was still in her flannel nightgown. She told me that her mother had gone back to bed (which I had more than half expected) and that she didn’t want to wake her. I told her about Audrey, and she promised to fix it.
Audrey and I chatted a bit after that until a librarian I had not seen before came in to say that a Mrs. Fevre had checked Audrey out and there was someone here who would take her to Mrs. Fevre’s home.
“I will in fact take you to Mrs. Fevre’s,” I said when we were well away from the library. “Only not now. First, we have to find and engage the Three Sisters, if we can. Then, rum and pineapple juice. After that, the Fevre house—one of them, anyway.”
My final remark hoisted the eyebrows. “Do you really think there’s more than one?”
Sometimes I have a hard time sounding completely serious, but it was easy now. “I think there are probably more than two.”
We were lucky in the abrupt way that Lady Luck shows up when you are not looking for her. Three Sisters was in port and the sim in its screen sounded happy to see us. A look around—as long and nitpicky as I could make it—showed that the boat was every bit as bad as I had expected, and maybe worse. The sim said she would repaint as soon as she got the money, and I told her she would be paid when the trip was over and not before. She had caught on already that this was going to be a lot more than a one-day outing. Up on the bridge she and I fussed over the details, with input from Audrey whenever she felt like it. It ended up like this: A thousand to begin. That would let our new boat clean up and repaint, and more than cover her rental for a week. Three hundred more was to be paid when we sailed, and the rest when we left the boat. That would be a hundred for every day over the first week.
We would sail as soon as we could, provided that the boat was ready—only not until tomorrow at soonest, since all of us would have to pack and we’d have to lay in some supplies. The boat’s sim said she’d have some shopping to do, too; also we’d have to allow time for her fresh paint and spar varnish to dry.
When we got away from there, Audrey showed me a little food-and-drink joint on a dark side street. It was called McKean’s and was the sort of place that had candles on the table—only not lit for lunch—and a smoky little fire in a stone fireplace. No tablecloths. “You owe me a rum and pineapple juice, Ern. I only hope you’ve got the money.”
“Some. Not enough to hire that boat, but more than enough to buy us drinks.”
“And maybe something to eat? I know it’s early yet.”
I ordered drinks. “We’ll eat when we get to the Fevre house. Free there.”
Audrey looked thoughtful. “Technically, they don’t have to feed me until tonight.”
“I believe we may disregard that.”
Audrey was quiet until two tall, frosted glasses came; then she asked, “How do you like your drink?”
I wanted to say it tasted like pineapple juice over ice, but “Delicious” seemed more diplomatic.
“You got me checked out, so I ought to have bought; I’m sorry you had to.”
“That’s quite all right.”
“It was my obligation.” Audrey paused. “You, however, are obliged to tell me why the boat had to be the Three Sisters, and no other. You’ll recall that you promised you would over drinks.”
“Did I?” I leaned back in my chair. “I wanted to get that boat because Dr. Fevre chartered it originally to take him to Lichholm. It will have firsthand knowledge of those waters, reefs, rocks, beaches, currents, and all the rest. Also it seems probable that he won’t try to dodge it if it comes back again, as he might a boat he doesn’t know. I’m hoping that he’ll stick around to find out why it has returned.”
After a moment, Audrey nodded. “That’s sensible.”
“Thanks.” I took a quarter minute to arrange my thoughts. “Lastly, it’s a fishing boat, so I knew it would have big refrigerated tanks in the hold. Remember those? They’re where the catch goes when the fishermen shake it out of their nets. Those tanks should be just about perfect for cadavers.”
“Fresh cadavers, presumably.” Audrey shuddered. “They wouldn’t want them to rot and stink.”
I borrowed her word. “Presumably.”
“Lichholm. It means the Isle of Corpses. Did you know that, Ern?”
I nodded. “I did, although I always think of it as Cadaver Island.”
“Why would anybody call an island that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, Audrey. It’s something we may find out.”
7
CONVERSATIONS
Back when I started that last chapter, I thought I would jump right to the island in this one. Only now I’m not going to. The more I think about what being there was like, the more I think I ought to write a little about how it was for the four of us—especially me—on the boat. Maybe I ought to leave out the seasickness; but all of us got seasick, and once on the first day all four of us were puking over the rail at the same time. If you’ve been seasick you know how it was, but if you haven’t you really can’t imagine. The boat keeps jumping around under your feet, and you wish the devil in charge of that were on it with you and you could get your hands around his stinking neck.
Because it never stops. Not ever. Not even for one minute. The boat told me later that it is nowhere near as bad on a big ship because they have fins down under water; those fins are programmed and try to take care of things. Only on a boat as small as ours fins do not work and would cost too much anyway.
The rolling is bad and the pitching is worse. When the boat does both at once, that is the worst of all and so bad I can’t describe it. When the rolling and pitching don’t make you chuck, you’ve got your sea legs. All four of us got sea legs eventually, but it seemed like it took two forevers. Audrey got over her seasickness first, and she had never minded being sick and chucking very much because she’d known it was coming, what it was going to be like, and when she’d get over it. She offered up her suffering and sort of went with the flow. On the way back, I tried to do that too.
Chandra got over being sick next, and pretty soo
n after Audrey. Chandra told me later that she had only chucked three times, and when she’d had stomach flu it had been a whole lot worse. It was two days after that before I got over being sick, and those were two of the longest days in my life.
Finally Adah Fevre got over it, but she took longer than anybody else because she spent so much time in her cabin. She’d wake up and chuck over the side of her bunk, wipe her mouth, and go right back to sleep. It’s always bad to be inside in rough weather, and it was worse for Audrey and me because the two of us slept side by side on the floor next to Adah’s bunk. When she was sick, we caught as much as we could in a bucket and cleaned up mornings and evenings, washing the bucket, the floor, and everything else, ourselves included, with seawater.
Here I ought to say something about the bunks. They folded up into the wall whenever a fully human was not using them. A fully human made his or hers up—or didn’t—and pressed a button, and like magic the bunk disappeared into the wall. It gave fully humans a bit more room for whatever they wanted to do in their cabins.
It would be nice (and easy) to say that Chandra cut out paper dolls or something and mostly left Audrey and me alone except for meals, but it wouldn’t be true. Usually Chandra was right in there with us or else pounding on our door, so no sex at all for the first couple of nights. After those nights, we just left our door unlocked all day; then at night we bolted it, and when Chandra beat on it I would whisper through the crack, saying we had been asleep and her mother and Audrey were still asleep, so keep quiet and go away. Most of the time it worked pretty well.
Only one morning it wasn’t Chandra pounding on the door, it was Adah. She had gone out leaving Audrey and me alone. As soon as she was gone, we had thrown off our blanket and stripped. I told Adah I slept naked and what did she want? She said she wanted in, so I said, “All right, but you’ve got to give me a minute to get my clothes on.” Then I did, even though Adah kept right on pounding. When I let her in, she yelled, “Where’s Chandra?”
Audrey said, “In her room asleep, I imagine. Did you wake up both of us for that?”
Adah said, “You can just get up off that floor and sit down somewhere so you can talk to me.”
Audrey shook her head. “I’m not about to stand up in my filmy nonexistent nightgown with dawn coming through the porthole and a man in the room. May I respectfully suggest that you go back to bed and get some sleep? We can talk at breakfast.”
“It’s morning already,” Adah told us. “My daughter spends too much time with you two, and I don’t like it.”
I said, “You’re talking to the wrong people. Do you think we bribe her with steaming creamys? If you want her to stay with you, tell her that.”
“You could send her back to me!”
Audrey said, “And what would we do if she disobeyed? Because she would. She’d be sitting in your cabin while you slept for hours. The weather’s too bad for her—”
“It was bad enough at home!”
Audrey said, “Was that our fault? You checked me out just a few days ago, and Ern not long before that.”
By that time I was looking for the butcher knife. It wasn’t in Adah’s belt, and I could only hope she hadn’t stuck it in the top of her boot.
“You two think I can’t do a thing to you!”
I cleared my throat. “You can damage us, you mean. For Audrey’s sake, I wasn’t going to bring this up; now I’ve got to. The Polly’s Cove Public Library had a copy of me, an old edition they’d owned for years, apparently. You checked him out and damaged him so badly that they had to amputate his arm. Would you like to tell me how that older Ern displeased you?”
Adah only glared at me.
“Whatever it was, you made him pay in spades. There are people who tear pages out of books because they’re offended by something the author wrote. Nobody notices the pages are gone until another patron checks out the book and complains, and that may be a year or more after the book was mutilated. My old reclone wasn’t—”
“He said Barry was unfaithful!”
I nodded. “I imagine he did. The library did the best they could for him. They may have actually persuaded a surgeon to attend him, but you had hacked his right arm at the shoulder and even an expert surgeon can only do so much. The library has gotten the poor old reclone you’d mutilated new shirts with little magnets glued in place, so that his empty sleeve would stay folded against his chest.” There was a pause while I swallowed and tried not to sound as angry as I felt. “That was before somebody cut his throat. I’ve got on one of the poor guy’s old shirts now.”
“I came here to talk about Chandra, you fool!”
Audrey jumped in. “I want to talk about her too. She isn’t one of us any more than you are. She’s fully human, not a library reclone; and if you treat your daughter the way you seem to have treated an earlier copy of Ern, they’ll lock you up in an asylum and throw away the key.”
There was one of those long silences. Adah glared at us and we gave it back doubled. Finally I told Adah, “Like I said, I’m wearing one of that earlier copy’s shirts. If I were to take off this coat, you’d see stains up here near my shoulder—his blood had soaked through his bandages, and bloodstains are damned hard to get out. If Prentice back at the library has half the guts she looks like she has, she’ll have hung on to your deposit. Did she?”
Without saying a word, Adah turned on her heel and marched out.
After that Audrey and I got dressed, and in half an hour or so we were leaning over the rail side by side, just a happy couple looking out to sea. Here I ought to explain that we were up on the top deck, on top of the cabins, the bridge, and so on. It was the first time I’d been up there, and I had climbed up because the Three Sisters was taking green water over the bow every five minutes or so. If you didn’t want to stay in your cabin or get your feet wet, you left the main deck and climbed up on this upper deck quick. Adah had new sea boots and Audrey had old ones, but Chandra and I were stuck with shoes.
To me, the sea is always beautiful. When it is calm, it’s like looking at a beautiful woman, a giantess so big that you cannot see all of her at once even though you know she goes on and on, more and more lovely smooth skin with thrilling curves longer than a man’s eyes can ever take in. Only when it’s as rough as it was then, looking out to sea is like looking at the biggest tiger the world has ever seen, and that tiger is raging, clawing at you, huge white-tipped claws by the thousands and hundreds of thousands crashing against the hull, eager to grab anybody it can reach, pull them overboard, and drown them in a heartbeat. And yet it’s still beautiful and I loved it even when it seemed to be trying to sink us. Beauty will do that to you.
Finally Audrey said, “Does this make you think of our patron, Ern?”
“It didn’t,” I told her, “but now it does. Now it always will, I suppose.”
“Sometimes the ocean is lovely and peaceful, and sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes it’s just a little rough, busy and energetic, with a whistling wind.” She waited for me to speak, and when I said nothing she added, “Doesn’t that remind you of somebody we know?”
I thought I knew what she was asking. “Perhaps Adah’s like that at times, but I’ve never seen her when she was. Do you know psychology?”
Audrey shook her head. “I’m not superstitious, so no. I haven’t studied it because I don’t believe a lot of things the psychologists say.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “I’ve been wondering whether Dr. Barry Fevre does—or rather, just how much psychology he knows. Since he’s a doctor he must be familiar with the basics, or so it seems to me.”
“If he were here now, what would you ask him?”
“Since he’s surely had plenty of chances to see that there’s something wrong with his wife, why he doesn’t get her treatment?” When Audrey made no reply, I finished the thought. “I suppose it’s possible he did.”
Audrey said something then, but the wind whirled her words away like so many scraps of paper. I
got her to repeat them, and she said, “I asked if Chandra would know.”
“Maybe she would. I’ll find out.”
There was another silence. The sun was rising, but it seemed to bring no warmth; its light was fitful and brief, too often stifled by clouds.
“I think you’re out to avenge the death of that earlier copy. Am I right, Ern?” Audrey’s words were softer than down.
“Yes, I am. I want justice for my earlier self. How did you know?”
“From the way you sounded when you talked about him this morning. Was his throat cut at the Fevres’?”
I shook my head. “He was sitting in the lobby of the library. When I came in, he was all right. Dispirited, and wearing a fire-sale price, but alive. When I went out, he was dead.”
“And he was you.”
I thought that one over. “In a sense, he was. Yes. We were both Ern A. Smithe, if you like. He was an earlier copy. Of course the original, the manuscript, passed away long before I was published.”
“Same here.” Audrey was smiling. “My original’s been gone for a couple of centuries. How did yours die? Do you know?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. Cancer or a heart attack, probably. But I really have no idea.”
“Mine drowned.”
I could only stare at her.
“Another book, of course. I was left on an island in the South Pacific with a few hand tools, a saw and a hatchet, a coil of rope, and so on. I was to build a boat—a vessel of some kind—and sail it back to civilization. There was no cameraman with me. I just set the timer and aimed the camera so I’d be in the picture, working or whatever. Roasting a fish.” Audrey smiled. “That made a good picture, and there were quite a few good fish to spear, too.”
“Did your boat sink?”
She shook her head. “I built a raft. That was what I’d planned all along, although I didn’t tell anyone. I felled trees of the right size, trimmed off limbs, dragged the trunks to the beach, and all the rest of it. I built my raft where it floated at high tide but lay on the beach at low tide. That was when I worked on it, mostly.”