Innocents Aboard

by Gene Wolfe

  “Like bird?”

  “Yes, I do.” The young man hesitated. “But I’m going to have to leave Lily here while I go to tell her father and her mother, and I won’t leave her with you. Not as long as you’re alive.”

  “Take meat?”

  “Yes. You may take it and eat it, but then you must go. Don’t come back, I warn you.”

  The bird dove toward the meat and snatched it up, rising in circles, higher and higher, with the meat still clamped in its bill. At length it found a favoring wind and flew northwest, apparently following the coast.

  The young man watched it go, a winged dot of black against the morning sky, until wings and dot vanished. Then he propped Moonrat’s slug gun against the bole of the tree Moonrat’s knife had struck and began to walk, wondering as he walked just how much of the life he had known might be salvaged, and how much, in addition to Lily, was gone forever.

  The Wrapper

  It was so nice to see it again, the little meadows fenced with the walls of dry-laid fieldstones, and the architectural woods—big gray trees like columns written over with hieroglyphics. And the huts and little church, all thatch and sticks plastered over with mud, like muddy little mushrooms the trees let live there.

  Before I went to sleep last night, I tried to remember as much as I could, scared I might forget it all. Knowing I will forget it all in a year or so, pretty soon after I have talked myself into thinking it was just a dream. That is why I am writing this. I am going to keep this on my hard disk, print out a copy for my desk, and back everything up.

  This was real.

  It started on Saturday when I took Joan to dinner. Joan used to work at Botha, too. She works at another company now, but we still get together about twice a month. There was a time when I thought I might marry Joan, and I think there was one when Joan thought she might marry me. But it was not the same time, if you know what I mean.

  Let me start over, because this is really going off in the wrong direction. It began when the Zuccharas moved in across the hall. Not that I noticed them particularly either way. Mister is short and wide, with a big black mustache. Mrs. Dent says he is a chef, but that may not be right. He does not get drunk or want to talk, so that was all right with me. It still is.

  Mrs. Z. is short and wide, too. Her mustache is smaller and she has about ten black dresses all pretty much alike. She wants to talk, but only to other women in the building, which suits me. They go to church a lot, I suppose to mass. They are the sort of people you imagine bowing down to a crucifix, and I guess they do. Well, why not? Mister wears a fresh carnation in his lapel when they go to church, and I like that.

  Angelo never goes with them, though. It was a while before I noticed that.

  Angelo is their son, about six. You are not supposed to have kids in this building, but I guess the Zuccharas know somebody. Or they could be related to the owners or something like that. Anyway, they seem to have gotten a variance or whatever you call it. An exemption?

  Whatever.

  I remember the first time I saw Angelo. I thought oh my God don’t buy him a drum. But Angelo is a quiet kid, really. He is even quiet when his folks are away at church. Or more likely he is not in there. She probably takes him to stay with somebody else before they go. Like maybe Mister is her second, and her first is Angelo’s father, and he takes him when it is not convenient for her to. Anyway, Angelo does not look much like them. He has that dark skin or anyway a wonderful tan, but he is blond. If Mrs. Z. is really his mother, there is just no way Mister can be the father.

  Maybe Angelo is adopted.

  One day I saw him playing in the hallway, and I sort of grinned at him. He said, “Hi,” and started to grin back, but then he stopped and stared at me. He has these beautiful blue eyes about as big as jawbreakers. When Angelo stares at you, you know you have been stared at.

  I said something to show I was not somebody he had to be scared of, and after that I would talk to him a little every time I saw him, which was about once a week. That is how I found out his name, and I saw him going into the place across the hall two/three times so I know that is where he lives.

  Then Saturday night after I took Joan back to her place I guess I did not push my door all the way closed or put on the night bolt either. I logged on and was checking out my e-mail, and here was Angelo, right at my elbow and sort of reading over my shoulder. I said hello and how are you doing, and all that, because what would be the use of me being mad? Angelo is just a little kid and did not mean any harm or he would not have let me see him like that. I was his friend, wasn’t I? So I would not be mad if he came for a visit.

  We talked a little bit and I showed him some of my e-mail and tried to explain the difference between a computer screen and a TV. Then I remembered that the waiter had left a piece of candy for Joan on top of our bill, only she had not wanted it. She never does eat anything like that, and I stuck it in my pocket.

  So I got it out and gave it to Angelo. He said, “Thank you,” very polite and unwrapped it and put it in his mouth, and said “Thank you” again. After that I went to one of the tech boards where I knew they would be talking about automated sailing ships, something that interests me quite a lot.

  It went on like that for quite a while and pretty soon it hit home to me that it was getting really late and Angelo ought to be home in bed. I looked around for him and he was over at the window looking down at the parked cars, only he was looking at them through the candy wrapper. Then he turned around and looked at the table lamp through it like that was really, really interesting. And after that he sort of smiled and gave it to me.

  I put it up to my eyes like he had and looked at the screen.

  This is where I have a really hard time. Because I want to say what it was I saw through the wrapper, and I want to say it so you will know (you being me five or ten years from now) what it was I saw. Only I want to say it so you will know that I did and this is not just some bullshit. That is going to be hard.

  Here goes. It was a book, the biggest book anybody ever saw, bigger than I am. Taller, I mean. And wide, those pages must have been four or five feet across. It was open on a sort of a stand, and there were pictures and that business where the first letter is sort of a picture, too, like an M was two naked men carrying a naked girl like she was dead or had passed out.

  I started reading and looking at the pictures, and there was no way you could read it all, it just went on and on without me ever turning the page, and after a while it sort of came to me that whatever I wanted to read was written on there someplace, high-tech, low-tech, you name it. There were circuits there that did things I had never thought of or read about anywhere, with little people in the drawings to point out the best parts, the kind of thing nobody has done for about five hundred years, and there was a poem next to one that made me feel like I’d spent my whole life at sea the way I used to want to. Lots of sex, too, and hunting lions with a spear. All kinds of stuff.

  Anything I wanted to read about.

  Anything.

  This is another hard part. I do not want to write it, and I know that’s going to make it hard for me to write it the way it really happened. I set the wrapper down, eventually, and looked around for Angelo, but he was gone.

  Without looking through the wrapper, my PC was just my PC again. I thought about that, but to tell you the truth I was too dumb to be scared. I should have been, but I just kept trying to figure it out. I got up for a while and walked around, but that did not help either. Angelo had gone out and closed the door quietly behind him like a nice kid.

  I think he really is one, too, even if his eyes do make me nervous.

  He was not out in the hall playing, either. I thought about calling over to his parents, but how would it have looked, a grown man calling up to ask about their little boy at that time of night?

  Finally I sat down here again and smoothed out the candy wrapper (it was sort of light-red-colored, more of a rose red than a pink) and picked it up and looke
d through. And there was the big book again, with everything (really everything!) written on just those two pages. My right hand kept the wrapper up in front of my eyes, and with my left I reached out to feel the computer.

  That is when I got the surprise of my life, because what I felt was the big book. The boards were covered with leather like the oiled leather of a baseball glove, soft but strong, and there seemed to be actual wood underneath that. The pages felt like the head of a drum, except not stretched tight. I picked up the corner of one.

  Wow, I thought. Wow!

  I still think wow.

  I took the wrapper away and looked at my hand, and it was touching the screen. That’s when I started to be really scared. I put the wrapper on top of a box I keep floppies in and tried to think, but I never found a lot to think about. Not right then, and not anytime that night. I guess I was in shock.

  Here I would like to start, “Next day at work—” Only I know not, because that was Saturday night. So there is Sunday there, and I do not know anymore what I did. I know I never did look through the wrapper again though, or even touch it.

  Monday at work I tried to remember one of those circuits and draw it out. There were parts of it I could get and parts I could not. That night you would think I would have looked again, but I was afraid to touch the wrapper. I remember sitting in my living room making sketches and deleting them, and staring at it. I never picked it up.

  Wednesday I got the circuit right, I think. I took the printout in to Mr. Koch and told him what I think they will do, which is hunt for an idea instead of words. I remember exactly what I said, “Put together a couple hundred of these, and you could say get everything about going crazy and it would get you all that, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and all the rest of that stuff.”

  Mr. Koch looked at my circuit for a long time, then he said, “I’m going to have to study this. I’ll get back to you.” Just before quitting time, he gave me back my printout and said, “Either you’re the biggest screwball anybody ever saw or you’re a frigging genius. We’re going to have to build some.” (He said “frigging” because Dot and Sally were both listening.)

  So after work I was not afraid of the wrapper anymore, or anyway not as much. When I got home I went over to the window and looked out, and it was not quite dark yet.

  The thing was that when I had looked at the book, not the first time but the other one, I tried to turn the page. And I lost my nerve and could not do it. I have never thought I was a hero or anything, but that made me feel really scuzzy. So this time I decided I would not even look at my computer like before, I would look outside at the lawn and the parking lot.

  I picked the wrapper up and carried it over carefully and got it with both hands and held it up to my eyes. That is when I saw those fields and the woods I told you about. It was like I was up in a tower, or it could have been floating over them like in a balloon.

  I do not know.

  It was beautiful, so beautiful it sort of caught inside my chest and I thought for a minute I might die. I kept telling myself I had to put the wrapper down, and finally I did, and after that I just sort of sat down and thought.

  Then I went out to the Greek place and ate dinner, and thought some more. I swear I do not even remember what I had. Probably the moussaka.

  The thing was, it was real. I kept on coming back to that. When I had reached out and touched it, the book was what I had felt. That big book, not my screen. It had only felt like my screen when I took the wrapper away. So it was real, what I saw through the wrapper. And I kept on thinking about his eyes.

  This is really crazy, as crazy as those books I got from the library. I should not put it in, but if you have read this far why not?

  The whole universe is around that wrapper.

  Suppose the universe is infinite, which is what somebody said in Scientific American. If it is, then “middle” is just a way of thinking about it, a reference point, and we can put the middle anyplace that is convenient. One might be handier than all the others, but it really does not matter except for simplifying your equations.

  So that wrapper is the middle as much as anyplace else is. But if it is the middle, you can say it is wrapping the whole universe. You define “in” as away from the wrapper, if the wrapper is the middle.

  So if you are inside, in the candy, and you look through the wrapper—well, you see what I mean? Angelo is the one who gets to draw the axes, the crossing lines to measure from. He is the one who gets to say what the middle is.

  I do not know why.

  I thought about a lot of other stuff in the Greek place, but every time I try to write it down, I end up writing about his eyes. I have deleted a lot of that.

  Like when I was looking out at the forest again just like it used to be, and it was night and I could see the windows of a little house over here and another one over there, little round windows as yellow as butter, and the trees great big shadows. I kept thinking how his eyes looked like eggs, like the blue eggs of some bird that does not have a name but nests in those trees or even around those little houses in under the thatch.

  The next day, I guess that was Thursday, I tried to tell Sally just a little bit, just a hint like, and pretty soon I could see she thought I was nuts and she was trying to get away from me. So I went to Buck. Buck’s about as good a friend as I have at work or anyplace, but he laughed at me. It was not friendly laughter, if you know what I mean. It was like the people in the crowd laugh in that movie Freak Show, and after that I called Joan.

  I went home feeling really, really down. For a long time I just sort of walked around—living room, bedroom, kitchen, and living room again. Every time I saw the wrapper I started wondering all over again if it was real. Finally I went to the window and held it up like before.

  (I have got to write this, or none of it will make any sense.)

  It was already pretty dark, but down below me there were people dancing. I think they were singing, too, and dancing to their own singing, but I could not see them very well and I could not hear anything at all through the wrapper. I never could.

  One of them looked up and saw me.

  I swear she did.

  She saw me and stopped singing for a minute and smiled. After that she looked at me every time the dance came around. This was not Joan, naturally, but her face made me think of Joan the way she used to be about five years ago. She was a lot thinner than Joan and probably quite a bit younger. Her smile was sort of like Angelo’s eyes.

  And that was when I did it. I took down the wrapper and crumpled it up into a little tiny wad, and then I opened the window and threw it out.

  I think the wind must have caught it and blown it a long way away.

  The thing was I did not want to be crazy, and I knew Sally thought I was and she was going to tell everybody. And the more I looked, the more different from them I was going to get, even if I was not crazy. I would be a grown-up man carrying around a little square of red plastic wrapper and looking through it all the time. It would be the same as crazy, there would be no difference at all.

  Sooner or later somebody would try to take it away from me. That is what I thought, and I would yell and fight until they locked me up.

  Because it was something I saw when I was just a little kid, not any bigger than Angelo is. I do not know where, but I saw it a long time ago.

  For about a week I tried to forget it, but after that I was down on my knees looking through the grass everywhere and in the gutter and the cracks in the sidewalk, anyplace I could think of. If anybody asked, I was going to say I lost a contact lens. But nobody did.

  Yesterday I stopped Angelo’s dad in the hall and tried to talk to him, but he said his wife was sick and he had to get her prescription filled. I do not think he would have told me anything anyway. I thought Mrs. Dent would know where Angelo is because she seems to know everything, but she just said there are no children in our building and he must have been a visitor.

  So here is what I
did.

  I bought a lot of candy, all different kinds but all of them with different-colored wrappers about like that one. I carry some in my jacket pocket, and here in the apartment I have bowls of it all over. I used to lock my door as soon as I got home, but I do not anymore. I do not even close it all the way until I go to bed.

  Because you don’t have to have just one middle, one place where the vertical axis crosses the horizontal like you have in high school. You can have two or three or four sets of axes, if you want to. There are formulas that will let you transfer from one set to another.

  One day pretty soon I will see him again, probably this week. And I am going to hold out one of the bowls or a piece out of my pocket and say, “Hello there, Angelo. Would you like some more candy?”

  (I will write it all down next time, everything he says and everything that I say, too. Everything that happens.)

  He will look up then with those wonderful, scary eyes he has. What is he going to say to me, I wonder? Will he leave me the new wrapper?

  Most of all, I wonder what it is he sees when he looks through me.

  A Traveler in Desert Lands

  He, coming up from the south as fate would have it, chanced to see a woman with a water jar upon her head. He was a courteous man, and sorely thirsty; tapping the knees of his camel, he made it crouch in the soft and shifting dust of the lost town of the dead before he asked for a drink.

  “You would honor me by drinking,” the woman with the jar said, “and by filling whatever skins and bottles you may have. If you empty my jar,” her face convulsed as if to dislodge some brass-backed carrion fly that none but she could see, “it is a matter of no moment, for I can easily refill it at our well.”

  The traveler accepted the jar (which was gray-green and of ancient appearance) from her hands, put it to his lips, and slaked his thirst, drinking deep. When at last he returned it to her half emptied, he said, “I have five large canteens, and would like to water my camel, if that is permissible. If you will show me where your well is, I will take care of these things myself.”