by Gene Wolfe
I nodded to show I understood.
“A storm—a hurricane—was the chief risk. I knew that. You don’t get them often in the South Pacific, but if one came…”
“It sounds terribly risky.”
“It was. Riskier than I had realized. Lonelier too. I started talking to myself, and I still do it now and then.”
I said, “I’ve never noticed.”
“It’s mostly when I’m alone, or when I’m trying to do something really difficult.”
Mostly to keep things rolling, I said, “That can’t have been the first time you were on your own.”
Audrey shrugged. “Of course I’d been alone on a lot of one-woman voyages, but building the raft while foraging for food took longer than the longest of those solo adventures. I lost weight I couldn’t afford to lose, and—”
I said, “Wait a minute. When was your last scan?”
“About a year before that. Let me think.” Audrey was quiet for a few seconds. “Eleven months before I went to the island. You’re wondering how I know all this.”
“Of course I am.”
“I found a book-length biography of myself while I was on loan to the library in Port Purity. It was detailed and quite accurate, and made interesting reading. There were a few trivial errors, but nothing major.”
“You were sending in reports from the island?”
“Screening them, yes. Reports and pictures. The last report—the book gave the whole thing, word for word—said my raft was breaking up in a rough sea. No hurricane, just six-foot waves.” She shrugged. “I was never heard from again.”
I considered that. “They must have had tissue samples, or blood or something. They recloned you, after all.”
Audrey shook her head. “Only my DNA on file. That’s all they need. Let’s talk about something else, Ern.”
I agreed, but we did not. I was a little embarrassed and felt sure I’d put my foot in it. Maybe she was, too. However that was, we just stood together at the railing watching the waves and enjoying each other’s company—or anyhow I enjoyed hers and I like to think she enjoyed mine.
“This is a lot smoother than the one that broke up my raft,” Audrey said after we had stood there staring out to sea for five or ten minutes.
I nodded. It was calmer now, almost like glass.
“Can you see that?” She pointed. “Down there.”
I stared. “The big black thing? It’s longer than this boat.”
“Yes. That’s its back.”
“Is it a whale?”
“I hope not. They attack boats like this—boats smaller than they are—sometimes.”
That hit so hard that I could barely keep my voice from trembling. “Why would they do that?”
Audrey shrugged. “Whales were hunted for centuries. First with harpoons that seamen threw from small boats, then with harpoons shot from a deck gun. We don’t hunt them anymore, as far as I know.” She was silent for a moment; then she added, “We’ve stopped hunting them, but they haven’t forgotten.”
We were silent for quite a while after that, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts.
When the wind picked up and a fair-sized vessel with sails came into view, Audrey told me what boats with its rig were called and how they were operated.
After we had watched it for ten minutes or so, I went down to the bridge; touching the screen there brought up the sim. She looked as jaunty as ever, with her white cap tilted a bit to one side and a crisp, clean uniform. I told her I wanted to borrow binoculars or a telescope. Anything like that.
“There’s a lugger at one o’clock, sir. Is that what you want to see?”
I didn’t know what a lugger was, but I nodded.
“I can show you better than binoculars could.” She faded as she spoke. Here came a sea view, bringing an explanation of what I was seeing. The sailing vessel I had spotted got bigger and bigger as I watched. It looked twice as big as our boat, with a wooden hull that had been patched in places and two masts, the foremast raked forward and the aft raked back. Both masts carried brown lug sails, and both lug sails were reefed. I would have said it was going to go down any minute, but the crew moving around on deck did not look panicky.
I asked the screen if it could identify the boat, and got the sim again. “No, sir. Name unknown to me and none painted on the hull.”
“Is that the boat that took Dr. Barry Fevre away when he sailed with you?”
There was a brief delay before the sim said, “Looks like it, sir, but I can’t be certain.”
I wanted to tell her to go closer to the lugger, but it seemed obvious that I couldn’t board it in this weather. I wouldn’t be able to learn much by shouting questions at the skipper either, and a vessel as primitive as the lugger wouldn’t have anything remotely like a screen.
Thinking about all that I said, “Follow that boat!” It wasn’t until I had gotten it out that I realized it was the old, old, “Follow that groundcar!” with a little alteration to make it fit.
Smiling, the sim touched her cap. “Aye aye, sir!”
I hadn’t been sure she’d do what I said, but in a moment I could feel our boat going around. That brought up a question I’d been wanting to ask. I knew it was kind of foolish, but I was pretty sure the boat was not going to laugh at me for asking it. “Will I ever get to see the other two sisters?”
The sim never turned a hair. “Perhaps, sir. When they’re in port.” She paused to let me comment, then added, “They are the Mermaid and the Lady Luck, sir.”
I wanted to know more, but I couldn’t think of a good way to phrase my question. Maybe if I had just blurted it out my conditioning would have fixed it. (It does that for me just about always. I have to talk the way the first Ern A. Smithe wrote exposition; I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about that already.)
Audrey pointed when I got up on the top deck again. “Have you seen that sailboat, Ern?”
I said I had. “I went down to ask our boat about it, and she showed me a close-up in her screen. It might be the boat that took Dr. Fevre off. My guess is that it is.”
“I hadn’t noticed it until we turned toward it. That was your doing, wasn’t it? Giving orders down there on the bridge?”
I nodded.
The wind was blowing too hard for me to hear Chandra’s boots on the steps; I didn’t realize that she had climbed up to join us until she said, “Are we going to catch it, Mr. Smithe?”
I looked around and asked how her mother was.
“She’s gotten all quiet again. Only the first time, she tore into me so bad I ran outside in my PJ’s. She probably thought I went out on deck like that, but I didn’t.”
“Good!” That was Audrey.
“I ducked into that little cabin back over the engine.” Chandra grinned. “It sounds pretty bad back there, but maybe I could get used to it. After I’d been in there awhile it didn’t bother me much.”
“People must sleep in there sometimes, when they have a lot of fishermen on board.”
“Yeah. You know what I did?”
Audrey smiled. “I can’t imagine. What was it?”
“There’s no furniture in there to hide behind or anything, so I climbed into a top bunk and reached out to push the button. It shut right up with me inside.”
I said, “You could have suffocated.”
“Nah. Push against it, and it opens up a little. After a while I did that until I could reach out and push the button again. Then it opened right up. That’s when I went back to our cabin to get my clothes. Mother was awake, only just lying in her bunk staring up at the one on top of hers. You know how she does.”
I nodded.
“So I didn’t say anything. I put these on fast and came out on deck. Then I saw you guys up here.”
Audrey said, “I’m glad you did. We wouldn’t want you to get washed over the rail.”
“It’s not that rough.”
“Not now, but it wouldn’t have to get much rougher. It could happen, and it
would happen fast.”
Chandra stared at her, then nodded.
“I’ve sailed a lot. I crossed the Atlantic, alone, in a little yawl; and once I set out to circumnavigate the globe in a sloop. I put a world of water behind me before I was captured by pirates in the Indian Ocean.”
I added, “She crossed the Irish Sea all by herself in a canoe.”
“I didn’t know.” Chandra sounded apologetic.
Audrey said, “What I’m trying to get at is that somebody your age going to sea had better listen to anybody who’s willing to teach her. You can’t know too much, and the smaller your boat the smarter you’ve got to be. Do you know how I died? The original me?”
Slowly, Chandra shook her head. “I never even thought about it.”
“I drowned when my raft fell apart. Maybe I’ll tell you more about that sometime, but I really don’t enjoy talking about it.”
“Were you alone on the raft?”
Audrey nodded.
“You liked that. Liked being alone.”
“Sometimes I did. Yes.” Audrey fell silent, and I wished I could hear what she was thinking.
Chandra said, “I like being alone, too. Sometimes.”
Before the silence became awkward, I said, “You must have friends at school.”
“Some.” Chandra shrugged. “Friends, but I’m not really tight with anybody. We’re friends in the morning, only not after lunch. You know how I mean?”
I nodded.
Audrey said, “There are people who’ll work without being told, and not talk unless you want to talk too. But not a lot of them. Really, very few.”
There was more conversation before we caught up to the lugger, but I don’t remember everything and none of it was all that interesting.
What happened when we caught up was somebody on the lugger shouted, “Permission to come aboard?”
You would have thought our boat would have asked one of us if it was all right, but it did not unless maybe it asked Adah Fevre. It just shot a fishing net out to the lugger. I suppose it was thirty or forty meters, but the net reached and there was enough left over for the lugger’s crew to tie it down some way.
A man jumped on it a lot quicker than I would have and started climbing across. Of course the net sagged into the water between our boat and the lugger, and for quite a bit of that distance his head went under every time a wave hit. He stayed with it though; I like to think I’m tough, but I had to admit that he was a lot tougher than I am.
Writing like this, it can be pretty close to impossible to tell about a certain thing so that it reads the way the thing actually was, and this is one of them. When the man finally scrambled up onto the main deck, oilskins and all and everything dripping wet, he saw us and I saw him. As soon as I did I knew who he was. I’d only gotten a glimpse of him in the library, but I knew anyway. I whispered to Audrey, “Adah’s husband!”
Half a minute later he was standing on the top deck with us; he stuck out his hand and said, “Barry Fevre.”
8
TO LICHHOLM
If there had been time to think, I might not have taken his hand; after all, I thought he had cut the old me’s throat. That was bad, and the way I saw it he was certain-sure to try for mine the first good chance he had, which was a whole bunch worse. Thing was, I didn’t have time to think; and the way he’d crossed on the net through that wild sea, climbing from one boat to the other, was the bravest thing I’d ever seen. So I shook his hand and said, “I’m Ern A. Smithe, Doctor,” the way you do, and introduced Audrey. She gave him her hand and a nice smile, but I felt certain her fingers were crossed.
After that he kissed Chandra’s cheek, and said, “Good to see you again, honey.”
She sort of nodded, he straightened up, and Audrey said, “You must be freezing.”
He shivered. “I am. If there’s a warm cabin in there…?”
I said, “Sure.” My brain had caught up to what was going on by then, which was that it had two big facts to wrestle with. First, I believed he’d cut the throat of the old man who had been an earlier edition of me. Second, I didn’t know that for certain. It seemed likely as hell because he’d been right there. But why would he do it? Motive, means, and opportunity; from what I’ve read, those are the three legs of a criminal investigation. Dr. Fevre had the second and the third, but that first one looked terribly iffy. He would have had to know Adah’d checked out the old me because she was looking for him. He’d also have to know, or anyway believe, that the old me had found out quite a bit. But—and this was one hell of a big glitch—he couldn’t know that Adah had cut off the old me’s arm and returned him to the library, which meant the old me was no danger to him anymore. No more motive, which made Doc Fevre’s guilt pretty damned unlikely.
It gets worse. He couldn’t help but know that he could’ve bought the old me for peanuts. The price had been hanging around the poor old me’s neck, and for a tenured professor it wasn’t much more than pocket money. If he bought him, he could cut his throat or burn him, or just shove him off a nice high cliff; and there would be no trouble about it. It would be perfectly legal. As it was, the library’s lobby was full right then, there were people all around. Sure, maybe nobody would notice, but it was more likely that somebody would. Suppose it got out? Wouldn’t there be questions at the faculty meeting? Lots of questions from his students, too, after his sabbatical was over?
So why not buy the old me—dirt cheap like I said—off him in private, and hand him over to the students to dissect? You needed bodies for that, but did they have to be fully humans? Leaving aside facial details, there isn’t a broken token’s worth of difference between a reclone and a fully human. How could there be?
Could I have heaved Dr. Fevre over the side some dark night? I’d seen glowing things down there that were too big to be human and too much like humans to be fish. So if I grabbed him when he wasn’t expecting it … Only I needed to know one hell of a lot more before I tried anything like that. You can see why I was thinking so fast that smoke might come out of my ears any minute.
Right then Audrey told him, “We’ve got two warm cabins with chairs and so on. Ern and I sleep beside your wife’s bed—Adah Fevre’s your wife, isn’t she?”
He nodded.
“She has one and Chandra has the other. If you’d like to see your wife now…?”
Dr. Fevre shook his head. “I need to dry off first. Dry off and get warm. Can I strip somewhere private, wrap myself in a blanket, and put my clothes in the dry washer?”
Chandra said, “I’ll do that, and you can change in my cabin.”
So we went down to the main deck and I fetched one of the spare blankets. Then Audrey and I went back up onto the top deck, leaving Dr. Fevre alone in Chandra’s cabin, with Chandra waiting outside. When he was dressed again, Chandra came up and got us. We found him nice and dry, sitting in one of her bolted-down chairs and sipping kafe.
He raised the cup. “I ordered this. I don’t think my wife will object.”
Audrey said, “I’m sure she won’t. Order something to eat, too, if you want it.” By then the Three Sisters had begun pitching hard as well as rolling; so maybe I ought to explain that the kafe cups had lids with slots you could sip out of. Dr. Fevre did it a lot smoother than I would have; you could see he was an old sailor.
“I took a shower, too, to rinse off the seawater.” He waited for one of us to say something. “I tried not to use much fresh water, desalinization should take care of my gallon or so, and we ought to reach Lichholm in a couple of days. There’s plenty of fresh water there.”
That one surprised me. I said, “You knew we were going to Lichholm?”
He nodded. “It seemed a safe assumption. I screened this boat hoping to get her to come there and pick me up, and found out that she’d been chartered.” He waited, and when I didn’t say anything he added, “Her destination was confidential. What wasn’t confidential was the name of the person who had chartered her.”
&n
bsp; “Your wife.”
“Yes, Adah. It wasn’t hard to guess her destination, or that she had competent friends who were handling things for her.”
Audrey said, “We’re reclones, Ern and I. I feel sure you know.”
He shrugged. “Of course, but there was no reason to bring it up.”
“Your wife checked Ern out of the library and enlisted his help, and he talked her into checking me out too.”
Dr. Fevre smiled. “You’re in his debt.”
“Yes, but in hers as well.…” Audrey let it trail off. “She’s my patron. May I ask why you don’t live with her?”
I tried to change the subject, but Dr. Fevre waved it away. “I’ll explain.”
He turned to Chandra. “I meant to get you alone and tell you about this, honey; but I might as well do it now. Not many people ask, but I tell anybody who does.”
Chandra nodded, looking so uncomfortable I expected her to run off.
“Your mother has an emotional disorder. It causes her to alternate, without warning or pause, from wild elation to severe depression. I know you can’t know a great deal about psychology. Nor do I, for that matter.”
He turned to Audrey and me. “Do either of you?”
I shook my head.
Audrey said, “No. Nothing, really.”
“I have consulted psychologists, experienced people who have dealt with many cases of this type. It is, as I told you, an emotional disorder.” He took a deep breath. “That means it’s not a mental disorder. Neither psychologists nor psychiatrists are permitted to treat sane individuals who do not desire treatment. I’ve tried repeatedly to persuade Adah to get treatment. She insists there is nothing wrong with her.”
Audrey looked at me before she spoke. “Ern and I are checked out of the Polly’s Cove Public Library, both of us. Chandra came for us, but officially it was your wife who checked us out; that means she’s our patron.”
“Which is why you two are on this boat. I understand.”
Audrey wasn’t finished. “As library resources, we’re obligated to inform our patron. We don’t have to mop floors or load dirty dishes into the sterilizer; but when our patron travels, she’s entirely within her rights to require us to accompany her.”