Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

“You have a gun.” That was the man who was holding one on me.

I shook my head. “Not me.” I had been trying to keep things casual, and I felt like I had been pulling it off pretty well. There was something about that place that was getting to me just the same. There were a lot of candles, which I do not think I have mentioned yet. Most of them were black, something you do not see often. One of them, burning in front of Martya, was as thick through as a young tree and had four or five wicks. Seeing them, I wondered if they were putting something into the air besides smoke. I was getting depressed, angry, and sad at the same time. Tonight I was going to be tortured to death and it did not seem right. Naala was not going to come, or if she did she would just look at this place from outside and go away.

All that stuff was crowding into my mind, but there was something else, too. It was the feeling that something really, really huge was studying me the way I might study a bug, something I could not see even though it could see me fine. The whole world had cancer, and the thing watching me now was the cancer. It did not make a lot of sense, but that was how I felt.

“You have a gun. Take off your jacket.”

I ignored him and talked to the photographer. “You think you’re going to get away with this and be somebody big and important. You’ll rule the world.”

The woman I had followed said, “We have the secret knowledge. He, I, all of us. You trust in God. Poor fool! The battlefields of all the world are manured with the bodies of those who trusted him.”

“I don’t trust in him,” I told her. “I don’t even trust in myself. But what if he trusts in me?” I was moving toward her as I said it.

“Stop!” That was the photographer. “Stop, or she dies!” He held his knife as he said it like he was about to stick it in Martya’s chest.

The woman’s shot came then, and for a minute I thought she must have shot me and wondered why it did not hurt. It had been so loud I felt deaf, but I heard the boom after it. I did not know what that was, but I dropped to the floor, and I must have drawn my own gun without thinking about it because it was in my hand. There was a little rattle that sounded faint, then another boom and another.

After that, people started screaming. They were trying to run out of that basement, but the stairs were the only way out. I had my gun up to shoot the photographer, but it seemed like he was gone. I ran toward Martya and slipped in blood and fell, but I kept my hold on my gun and did not shoot. That was because my father had taught me to keep my finger off the trigger until I was ready to shoot. It had sunk in, and I might have shot her if it had not. All this happened in a lot less time that it is taking me to tell you about it.

The guy on the stairs, the guy with the shotgun, was yelling at the Unholy Way people. I think he was trying to get them to shut up, but he was not having a lot of luck with that. For maybe ten seconds I felt absolutely certain the photographer was going to stab me; then I saw his knife lying on the floor and grabbed it with my left hand before I straightened up.

When things had quieted down a little, I pulled the skewers out of Martya’s leg and both arms. Then I cut off her gag and cut the ropes. She gasped for breath and just about fell.

“Oh, oh, oh!” and then, “I love you. Oh God, I love you so much!” I was not sure whether she meant God or me, but I figured either way was good. She was hugging me, only not hard because of the holes in her arms.

The guy with the shotgun was Russ Rathaus. Maybe you had figured that one out already, but I had not. I did not know until I saw him. You will want to know why he showed up, and I mean to tell you. But quite a few other things happened before I found out myself.

One was that I took off my shirt and cut strips from it to bandage Martya. Those skewers had been driven all the way through and into the wood of the cross. They were just puncture wounds, but they were bleeding from both ends so I had blood all over my shirt and jacket anyway.

I was about finished when Naala showed up with Aliz and the guy who had been dancing with her and three cops. She sent the one I had talked to back to the station house, and after what seemed like a pretty long time we had a paddy wagon for the prisoners and an ambulance for Martya. I think it was really about an hour and a half, but it seemed like forever. American cops would have latched onto Russ’s shotgun, but Naala told these cops to let him keep it and they did. She told them he was working for the JAKA, which surprised both of us.

From this point on, there is not a lot of interesting stuff for me to tell you. After quite a bit of waiting around in JAKA headquarters and Naala, Russ, and I shaking hands and fielding tough questions, sometimes together and sometimes separately, we went back to the Golden Eagle. There are no closing laws in that country, so the Eagle (which was what people mostly called it) stayed open just about twenty-four hours a day. Naala said that in the morning they put the empty chairs up on the tables and swept the floor, but there were always at least a few people working there. If you wanted eggs and coffee there would be somebody there to make them for you, or you could go into the kitchen and make them yourself. We were all hungry, so Russ and Naala cooked, with me trying to help out and getting in the way.

Finally we sat down, and that is a meal I will always remember. Hot coffee made just before it was poured, three kinds of sweet rolls that had been warmed in the oven, lots of bacon, and Naala’s eggs poached in wine. I was tired and looked like I had been working all night in a butcher shop, so I should not have been hungry. But I was not only hungry I was practically starved. While I tell you what Russ said, you have to picture me nodding and nodding and chewing and swallowing and spreading butter on rolls, particularly a big fat kind that had nuts on top and jam inside.

“When you found me,” Russ said, “you told me you had gotten Rosalee out.”

I said sure.

“I don’t think I ought to use the name of the person I was staying with. What do you think?”

I looked at Naala and she looked at me. Finally she said, “He will not be arrested, I will see to it. But if he become known … there is the Unholy Way. We are fools if we think we catch all tonight.”

I chimed in. “We don’t have the Undead Dragon. As long as he’s around they’re going to be dangerous. How dangerous I don’t know.” The hand came to life in my pocket when I said that. I had almost forgotten about it.

“So after you had gone,” Russ said, “I asked the friend who had been sitting with us where he thought Rosalee might be. He has hunches. Maybe you know.”

I nodded and kept nodding.

“He said for me to try this place and told me where it was.”

“She is here when the hour is not so late,” Naala told Russ. “She is elsewhere now. Asleep I hope.”

“Right.” Russ used his handkerchief for a napkin. “I found her here and talked to her a little. She told me—”

“This is before I go? You are here and I do not see you?”

I wanted to say, “Magos X,” but my mouth was full, so I just nodded. It would have been a bad idea anyway.

“She told me the Satanists had taken Martya. I went back to my friend and asked where he thought they might have taken her. He had several suggestions, so—”

Naala said, “I wish to hear them.”

He told her. One was an old mansion on the lake shore. One of the others was the undertaker’s.

“I went to the closest first,” Russ said. “It was all dark, but I snooped around. I found a window that was wide open and climbed in.” He waited for us to say something but neither of us did.