by Gene Wolfe
“I kicked at his feet as we went upstairs, but it didn’t do any good and after I’d kicked him half a dozen times I finally got wise. His legs weren’t really what was holding him up. He was like one of those bass lures you’re always bragging about—they wiggle a lot when they go through the water, but it isn’t the wiggle that makes ’em go.
“Then I got the idea that if I could get my hand out of the cuffs I could get to my gun. I still thought it was the little guy himself I was fighting, see? The key was in my watch pocket, and by rushing him as we got to the top of the stairs I was able to get my fingers in there. I couldn’t use my right, naturally, but I got the key between my teeth and managed to stick it into the lock just as we stumbled through the door of that apartment. The feeling I got when those cuffs dropped off was the greatest damned feeling I’ve ever had in my whole life.
“This time the door that I’d thought probably belonged to a closet was standing wide open, but there wasn’t a closet in back of it—it was as black as an alderman’s heart. I can see you’re not buying a God-damned word of this. Well, I was about through drinking anyway.”
I told John that I was willing to believe it if he said it was true, but that it was a story that took some thinking about.
“It does. But I’ve been thinking about it for twenty-eight years, and I’ve never come up with a better answer than the one that hit me as soon as I saw that open door. There was somebody inside there, on the other side of the dark, get me? I couldn’t make him out, but I could feel him just like you can feel death at the scene of a murder. I call him the Fisherman.”
I told John I wasn’t sure I understood him.
“Well, what do you guys do when you want to catch something? You buy yourself a little hunk of wood painted up to look like a bug, or maybe a frog or a little fish that a big one might like to eat, and it’s got a hook hidden in it someplace so the poor fish can’t let it go once he’s grabbed it. And you try to make your Colorado wobbler or whatever you call it act just as much like a real fish as you can.
“That’s what the Fisherman had done, and now he was reeling me in, probably getting a hell of a charge out of it every time I pulled back. I wore a crossdraw then—which regulations won’t allow anymore—and I was able to make what you call a cavalry draw with my left hand. I let the Monday man have three, and then I fired more into that closet. Neither one did any good, and the Monday man was dragging me closer and closer to it. I heaved with everything I had, then, and got my right hand free. Tore off a bunch of skin.
“You see, my cuffs had fooled the Fisherman into thinking he had his hook set good, when I was only caught by the knuckles, where I’d hit his lure on the chin.
“I’ve been thinking about that Fisherman, on and off, ever since it happened. That’s why I won’t fish, and why I always look real carefully at everybody I run into, which is what got me my captain’s bars. I’m not too worried about meeting another lure like the Monday man—I’d know one of those the minute I laid eyes on it.
“But I keep wondering whether the Fisherman ever uses live bait.”
The Waif
The soft sigh of breath might have come from a puppy, and Bin hoped it did. Quietly, hoping that it was a sleeping puppy and not a piglet (though he would very willingly have petted a piglet), he went to see, the heavy stick forgotten in his hands.
It was a boy, sound asleep on straw, and covered with more straw and feed sacks. The boy’s face was white, and so delicate it might almost have been a girl’s; his hair was as black as a crow’s wing. Bin stood watching him for a long time, feeling something he could put no name to. He had never had a friend. Fil and Gid were not really his friends, but he had not known that.
At length he turned over a bucket and sat on it. That was the way you got the rats to come out, you just waited, real still, not hardly breathing, till they thought you had gone; but the other boy’s breath made faint plumes of steam, and Bin’s big, greasy coat with the wool on the inside did not keep him warm enough. He found an old shingle and a bent nail, and printed: IF YOU HUNGRY COME MY HOUSE LATE WHISTLE BY WINDOW. On the other side: LITTLE ONE WEST NO ROAD.
Propping up the shingle near the sleeping boy, where he would be sure to see it, Bin tiptoed to the door. Niman Corin was nowhere in sight, and that was good. Niman Joel’s punishments for trespassing had been light; but they had burned Niman Joel, and who could say what Niman Corin might do? It was better not to be whacked at all.
Supper had been bread and soup, as it nearly always was. Bin lay in bed listening to Gam’s wheezing inhalations and speculating on the difficulties of giving the other boy soup. The bowl and spoon would have to be returned. There could be no getting around that. Could he trust the other boy to do it?
Everyone had trusted Niman Joel, even the grown-ups.
He should have gone to see the reverend, after, like Gam said. He had not, had lied about it. Gam had put his finger on the stove, not for lying but just so he would know how burning felt. He had been punished for the lie, even if Gam had believed him. That was something to remember.
To remember always.
Outside a saw-whet called, probably from the big pine at the edge of the woods.
It would have been better to have gone to the reverend. The reverend would have said what Fil had said, that Niman Joel had been punished on Earth and was in heaven now and all that. But it would have been better to have gone. One lie, and you have to watch everything you say forever.
But Gid had not been lying when he said he had killed that rat. He had showed it, almost as big as a cat. Or he had been, because somebody else had killed it, maybe. It had been poisoned or something.
The saw-whet cried again, a little nearer this time, like on a fence post. The mice would not come out in this cold, they had already come into Gam’s house to keep warm. As he had.
Gam had caught two in her trap, and one had drowned trying to drink out of the scrub bucket. Cats were no good, Gam said. When a old lady like her had a cat, folks said she talked to the Flying People. Maybe helped them like Niman Joel.
The saw-whet was perched on the chimney, probably. Its shrill whistle came again, and Bin sat up, threw off quilt and blanket, and sprang from his bed.
A shadowy figure was waiting outside in the snow beyond the window. Bin pushed his feet into his boots, snatched up his coat and what remained of the bread, and hurried outside.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked the boy waiting in the snow. The moon was bright, and it seemed to him that the other boy was dressed in rags, and thin rags at that.
“Very cold.” When the other boy took the bread his hand shook. “Can’t I come inside? Please?”
Bin shook his head.
“I could eat this in front of the fire, and warm myself. Just for a moment.”
“You’d wake Gam. She’d be mad.”
The other boy chewed and swallowed. “I wouldn’t, but suppose I did. Hasn’t she ever been angry before?”
“Sure. Lots.”
“Was it worse than my freezing to death?”
In the cabin, the other boy crouched in the ashes and ate the bread while Bin brought him a bowl of soup. There was still a little fire in the stove, banked for breakfast, so the soup was warm. “There isn’t any meat,” Bin explained, “’cause we don’t have any. It’s just carrots and potatoes, mostly.”
“It smells wonderful.”
While the other boy was eating his soup, Bin said, “You’ll have to go out when that’s finished.”
The other boy looked up, smiling. “Then I won’t eat so fast. It’s wonderful to be warm.”
“You could build a fire in the woods.”
The other boy said nothing, eating soup.
“Does Niman Corin know you sleep in his new barn?”
The other boy’s shoulders rose and fell. “I suppose. Some of them do.”
“They let you?”
The other boy dipped what was left of his bread into his soup and ate i
t. “Not exactly, but they know I’m there sometimes.”
“What’s your name?”
“They call me the Cold Lad.” The other boy smiled. “But that’s not really my name. My name is Ariael.”
“Mine’s Bin.”
Bin had smiled, too, when he spoke, but the other boy’s smile faded. “What are you going to do when I leave, Bin?”
“I guess go back to bed.”
“I’m tired, too. Probably more tired than you are.” The other boy spooned up the last of his soup and drank it. “I want you to let me hide in here, where it’s warm. Gam won’t find me. Will you do that?”
“You don’t have no boots?” Bin was looking at the other boy’s bare feet; one had been bleeding, and the blood was caked with ashes now.
“No. None.”
“Gam bought me these.” Bin indicated his own boots, sheepskin boots with thick wooden soles. “They’re big so I can wear ’em next year, too.”
The other boy said nothing.
“I guess I could give you one.”
The other boy grinned and hugged him, which surprised him very much indeed. “I won’t take it,” he whispered.
He let Bin go.
“But, Bin, think how Gam would feel if you gave me a boot. You’d have to say you lost it, and she’d be terribly hurt.”
“I guess.”
“So instead of giving me one of your boots, I want you to do something much easier. I want you to let me hide in bed with you. I won’t take up much room, and I’ll get down under the covers so Gam won’t see me. Watch.”
Handing Bin his bowl and spoon, the other boy ran soundlessly to Bin’s bed and slipped beneath the old quilt. The quilt rose—or so it seemed to Bin, watching it by firelight. For a moment or two it twitched and settled itself.
After that it seemed clear that the other boy had gone. Thinking about it, Bin decided that the other boy had slipped over to the side of the bed and slid over the edge, and was hiding under it. He took off his coat and hung it on the peg, pulled off his boots, stood them at the foot of his bed the way Gam liked, and got under the covers. The other boy was in there, too, small and thin and very cold. He huddled against Bin for warmth, and Bin found that he was no longer little, as he had been all his life. He was someone large and warm, someone strong, generous, and protecting. It felt good, but it felt serious, too.
The other boy was still there when he got out of bed in the morning. He washed the way he always did, trying not to look, got dressed, and went outside to cut a twig to clean his teeth the way you were supposed to.
When he came back in, Gam said, “Cold out?”
“Pretty cold.”
“There was bread left last night. It was going to be our breakfast.”
“I’ll be late for school,” Bin told her.
“You ate it, didn’t you, Bin? You got up in the night and ate it.”
“Yes’m.”
“Don’t cry. It wasn’t no sin.”
Gam held him for a minute. She was warm and smelled bad and he loved her.
“There’s soup left for me, and I’ll bake more bread, if I can get salt. It’ll be spring real soon now, Bin, and things will be easier.”
Gam had been right, Bin decided as he walked to school. Yes, it was still cold. Yes, there was still snow on the ground, a lot of it. But there was something new in the air, something that made him think of the other boy, a promise not in words. He had straightened up his bed because Gam had made him, and it had seemed like there was nothing in that bed, nothing at all. Or only the promise.
The other boy could whistle like a saw-whet. He himself could whistle like a wren, and he did as he walked to school, then fell silent as he clattered up the rickety wooden steps and shuffled into the long gloomy room with sheets of scarred wood for walls.
When the schoolmaster arrived, Bin rose with the others to greet him. “Good morning, Niman Pryderi!”
“Good morning, class. I trust you had a good holiday?”
Several nodded.
“You did not go to see Niman Joel burned?”
Bin, who had, said nothing.
“What about you, Shula?”
Shula had been toying nervously with one of her skinny braids; she let it fall as she spoke. “I didn’t go, Niman Pryderi. I didn’t want to.”
“That is well. Fil?”
Fil sat up straight. “Yes, sir. I went. I felt like I ought to see it.”
“That is well, too.” The schoolmaster rose, selected a stick from the woodbox, opened the door of the stove, poked the fire with it, and tossed it in to burn. The sky around the hole in the weathered aluminum roof was bright blue. As he had often before, Bin stared at it, sick for the freedom temporarily denied him.
“Do you understand why I said that, class? I said it was good that Shula didn’t want to watch Niman Joel burned, and good that Fil felt he should. Who will explain that? Bin?”
He rose as slowly as he could, his mind racing. “’Cause boys ’n girls are different?”
“They are, of course, but that’s not the reason.” Hands were up. The schoolmaster said, “Dionne?”
She stood, taller and wider than anyone else in the class, and ever defiant. “You said it was good that Fil watched, because we ought to know about it—about what happens to people that get mixed up with the Flying People. But we shouldn’t want to watch it, because it was horrible. Nobody ought to want to see somebody else burned to death. That’s sick.”
“Excellent, Dionne.”
Bin, who never raised his hand, had raised it now. For a moment the schoolmaster looked at it in surprise. Then he said, “Yes, Bin. What is it?”
He rose again, as slowly as ever. “I—I …”
The schoolmaster thought he understood, and said, “You were there, too. With Fil, I imagine.”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I was. I seen it. Only—only if we don’t want to see it, we could just not do it. Folks do it, Niman Pryderi. It don’t just happen.”
There was laughter. Some light object struck the back of his head, and he sat down.
“We have lost a world,” the schoolmaster explained almost gently, “and it was the only world we had. All our nations collapsed as our raw materials were exhausted, Bin, and no sooner had we begun to rebuild than the Flying People arrived.”
The class was satisfied and seemed ready to move on, but the schoolmaster was not. He went to his desk, sat down, and regarded them, his soft, dark eyes traveling from face to face. “Their presence prevents us from rebuilding it. How can we bring back the science we lost, when we know that human beings not much different from ourselves are watching all we do, and our lost science is child’s play to them?”
He paused. “That was a rhetorical question. Do you know what a rhetorical question is?”
About half the class nodded.
“It’s a question we ask because it cannot be answered, or because the answer is so obvious that no one needs to say it. In this case, the answer is that we can’t. You may say that our shame, embarrassment, and humiliation ought not to prevent us from doing what we should. If you won’t say it, I will. I do. But the fact is that we are so prevented. It’s why so many of you have only one pair of shoes, and less than enough to eat. That’s why you have to go to school in an old truck. Burning our neighbors is horrible, very horrible indeed. But having neighbors who would side with the Flying People is intolerable—which means that we do not tolerate it.”
Dionne approached Bin at recess; and Bin, who was terrified of her, tried to back away.
She smiled. “I just wanted to say I never knew what a good little kid you are. They pick on you sometimes, don’t they?”
He shrugged. “They make fun. Gam ’n me’s poor.”
“Yeah. Let me tell you a secret.” She bent, her mouth at his ear. “We all are.”
Bin had not yet recovered his emotional balance when Fil took him aside. “Look, Bin, somebody’s gotta tell you this, so I guess it’s me. What you
said in class? You know what I mean?”
He nodded.
“There’s a dozen kids that will tell their folks, all right? What happened to Niman Joel could happen to you. It don’t take much. You keep your mouth shut from now on. Or you say he got what he had comin’. You say, show me another one and I’ll bring the wood. Understand?”
“It was dumb,” Bin said. “I know that.”
“It was dumb, and if you keep on like that I won’t know you anymore, understand? You’re going to be too risky to know, so you shut up.”
Bin joined the kickball game, and scored. Fil slapped his back, but none of the others said anything. As soon as the game had resumed, a big hand grasped his shoulder. “Come in,” the schoolmaster said. “I must speak with you.”
Docilely, Bin followed him back into the school.
“Sit down. You can pull up that stool. We’re not going to stand on formality until your classmates return.” The schoolmaster’s smile was touched with bitterness.
Bin did as he was told. “I guess I know what this is about, Niman Pryderi. I’m sorry.”
“I doubt that you do, Bin—though I’ve no doubt that you’re sorry. Do you know why I’m called Niman, Bin? Or why Niman Joel was, or any other man?”
Bin shook his head.
“When the Flying People came, we started calling each other Neighbor. Neighbor meant that a man was one of us, and not one of them. Then we wanted to burn our neighbors.” The bitter smile returned. “Which our religion—some people’s religion, at least—teaches us we should not do. So we changed it to Near-man, then to Niman. It wasn’t all that long ago. About the time I was born.”
Bin nodded again.
“Have I ever used my switch on you, Bin?”
“Last year.” Bin gulped. “For talkin’ in class.”
“I’m going to do it again, when class resumes. I am going to make the dust fly. Did you cry, last year?”