Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

I followed her into a big room with a lot of windows. It was a relief to look out of them after what I had seen of that building already, even if they did not show much except a lot of roofs and chimneys, and the night sky.

There was a table in the middle, a table not nearly as big as the room. It had six chairs, but there were only two men sitting at it, both middle-aged, well dressed, and tough looking. The bald one was at the end of the table. Naala motioned to a chair and we sat down.

Hair said, “What do you think of him?”

Naala opened her purse and got out a gold pen. There was a tablet at her place already. “We could not ask for better.”

“You rush to judgment.”

“As you asked.”

Hair grinned. “Tell me why.”

“For many reasons. One, he thinks of himself.” She was writing as she talked. “Two, he is of Amerika, like this Rathaus. Three, he know him. They are in the same cell. Four, Rathaus know this man. He may trust him more than us. Is that enough? I have more.”

Baldy said, “That is enough. Will he escape, too? You cannot know, Naala, but what do you think and why do you think it?”

“I can know, as you do not say. He will not, and that is number five. He may try. Is it that which you intend? It will depend on his treatment and his hopes.”

She turned to me. “You wish to return to Amerika?”

I said, “First I’d like to get my passport back.”

She nodded.

“Second, I’d like to collect enough information and take enough pictures for a book about your beautiful country. When I have those—they’re what I came here for—I’ll want to go back, yes.”

Baldy grunted. It did not tell me whether he had liked my answer.

Hair said, “We were given to understand that you did not speak as we do.”

“I don’t,” I said, “or not very well.”

Naala gave me the hard smile. “You learn in prison?”

“In prison and in Puraustays, and while I broadcast for the Legion of the Light. Was it the Legion who got Russ out? Is that what you think?”

Hair said, “Would not they have taken you and left him? So I think.”

I said, “You’re right.”

“Thus you will not escape,” Naala told me. “Rathaus has friends here, you see? He believe they get him back to Amerika and they may try. I do not know. You, having no friends, might slip away from us and wander the streets.” She pointed to the door. “Do you wish it? Go! Not one here will shoot you.”

“In prison clothes,” I said.

“You will get others. You will steal them. Or you will steal money and so buy them.”

I shook my head, and she turned to Baldy.

“You see? He helps us, and we let him go free. Let him write this book as he wishes. He is a sensible young man.”

Hair grumbled, “He speaks like a child.”

“Like a little child he speaks a foreign tongue he has learned by listening. Soon he speaks better.”

“I do not mean a foreign—,” Hair began.

Baldy moved his hand a quarter of an inch or so, and that was enough.

“If he runs, it looks bad for me,” Naala told him. “It must be thus. I want him even so.”

There was more after that, but I have given you the main things and tried to quote all four of us as accurately as I could. Maybe this is the place to explain. I had taken notes, and I find that even when something happens to them later having written them down fixes them in my mind. So it is good to take notes, and when they get lost I have not lost the information, usually. Maybe you will doubt me when I say that, but there was one time when my notes were lost for a while then found again. There was not one thing in them that I had not remembered.

All right, Naala and I left together and walked maybe a mile to her apartment building. The shops and offices were all closed or looked like they were, and that was not where the bars and clubs were, so it was pretty quiet. I saw a couple of posters like the ones I described when I told about getting clear of the Legion of the Light, but I do not think I asked Naala about them.

In general, we did not talk much on that walk. I remember I said that we were likely to get busted because of my prison clothes.

She said, “Do not be concerned. They will not take you while you are with me. Tomorrow we get new clothing for you. I know a shop and I have good taste.”

I said, “I do, too. Or anyway, I think I have.”

“Men never do. Women sometimes, but not much.”

There was no elevator in her building, but that did not matter because she had a first-floor apartment. “You will like it,” she promised me. “It is nice, no?”

Of course I said it was. It was just three rooms and a bath, but all the rooms were big. The biggest room was a corner room with a lot of windows, maybe four feet above the ground. The kitchen was in one corner—a stove, a sink, and a little fridge. There was a desk in an alcove, too, with a telephone on the desk. I saw the telephone and thought, wow! But I did not say anything then. It was a spinning dial phone, something I had read about somewhere but never seen.

My bedroom was not as big as Naala’s, but it was still pretty big—a lot bigger than the cell I had shared with Russ Rathaus. There was a bed big enough to sleep two, a dresser, two bureaus, and two chairs. You could tell Naala was proud of everything. She pointed out all the pieces and told me all the drawers were empty, which I found out later was not quite true.

“It is better you keep the blind down, at night most particularly. If the window is light, people in the street see through the trees.”

I had already figured that out.

“They see through, or it may be they come to spy. When the sun come up, the blind may rise also. Then you have the light. You are hungry?”

“I’m too tired to be hungry,” I told her. “I’d just like a shower. Then I’ll go to bed, if that’s all right.”

“With me, you think.” She laughed.

I said no.

“For me you will be clean and smell sweet. This I appreciate, but you must sleep here.”

I said I would.

“If you come for me in the night, you will be hurt.” She had turned serious. “You may be killed, though I hope not. Do not tell others you were never warned.”

I said I would stay in my room unless I had to use the toilet.

“Still you wish a bath?”

I said I did.

“You may have one, but this you must do for me. Leave the uniform of correction on the floor beside my bathtub. You may take your shoes. Your stockings also.”

I said that was fine.

And that was what I did, wrapping a towel around me to make a kilt when I went back to my bedroom. I could hear Naala talking on the phone in the big room, but I could not tell what she said. She listened more than she talked, or that is how it seemed to me.

My new bed was a lot bigger than my bunk in the prison had been, and a lot cleaner, too. I got in bed and covered up, and for a little while I thought about the man in black and Russ Rathaus. Like, suppose we found Russ. Would the man in black be mad at us? And did I really want to help Naala find him? Stuff like that.

She thought I was just a kid. I knew that, and maybe she was right in certain ways. But I knew she was with the secret police, the JAKA. That warehouse the screws had taken me to was probably JAKA headquarters here in the capital, and Baldy and Hair had been pretty far up in the organization, especially Baldy.

So thinking about that I could see they were not as interested in Russ Rathaus as they thought they were. What they were really interested in was the people they thought had helped Russ escape.

Well, would the man in black be mad at me? I kept coming back to that as I got sleepier and sleepier. Why had he helped Russ, and where was Russ now? Would he be seriously pissed at me…?