Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

“You’ll say it was a damned fool thing to do, but when I did it I didn’t know there was anybody in there. One part of me was thinking there was nobody in there, so it would be pretty safe, and the other was thinking maybe they had Martya in there tied up and gagged. Which they did, except that I pictured her lying on the floor in the dark.”

Naala was watching him and not talking, and my mouth was full.

“Once I was inside, I saw light from a doorway and heard voices. I was pretty sure one of them was Grafton’s, so I went to have a look. I was still going down the steps when one of them took a shot at me. That stopped me, and I started shooting back.”

I said, “You had that shotgun.”

Russ shrugged. “They’re legal here. Only the army and the police can have pistols, but anybody can have a rifle or a shotgun. Even foreigners. I had mine wrapped in a throw rug so I could carry it through the streets, but I took the rug off before I climbed in the window. Now you’re going to ask what it was loaded with, and I don’t know. Some kind of bird shot, probably, but we were close enough that even quail shot would do a hell of a lot of damage.” He hesitated for a moment, then he said, “It only holds five shells.”

To keep him talking, Naala said, “They have shoot first. Grafton says this.”

“That’s right. There was a woman in there with a gun, and she fired before I had gone down the steps far enough to size up the situation. She was on the other side of the basement, and she missed. I shot back. You must have seen her body.”

Naala nodded.

“There was a man who had a gun. I killed him, too.” Russ paused and swallowed. “Probably you’ve killed people. I’m over sixty and I spent some time in the U.S. Army, but I never shot anybody until tonight. I killed three people tonight, and I haven’t worked my way through it yet.”

I was buttering another roll. “They were going to kill you, Russ.”

He said, “Uh-huh.” And then, “One was going to kill Martya. I don’t love Martya, but I like her. I owe her. He pulled his knife back to stab her and I shot him.”

Naala said they were killers and would have killed both of us if they had gotten the chance.

He said, “Is the U.S. government going to find out about this?”

She shrugged. “They do not care. It is our law here, their law there.”

“I suppose.”

Everybody got quiet and ate after that, which I had been doing already. After a while I went to the door and looked at the sky. It was getting gray, so I knew then why I was getting sleepy. Night was nearly over. Besides, I had eaten my eggs and six or eight buttered rolls. My jaw ached, reminding me of the aspirin I had found in Naala’s medicine cabinet.

While Naala and I were walking back to her apartment I asked her if she knew who had killed Butch. She said she did not, but we had ten prisoners and they would be quizzed all day. “Also others search there for papers. It may be they find something. If so, I will be told. Also who throws the head in. I must have the lock changed.”

There is not a lot left to tell about that night. I had a shower and Naala had a bath and got me to come in and scrub her back. “So you are useful after all,” she said, and grinned at me.

We had a drink before that, and we had a couple more before we went to bed and talked some. It was mostly private stuff so I am not going to give it here. Then we went to sleep.

When I woke up I was in my room and Naala was gone. So were all the clothes I had worn the night before. My gun and my badge case were lying on top of a stack of new clothes. I thought of the hand and was worried sick. It was not in the box or anyplace else I looked in. When I dropped my badge case I saw there was an identity card in there now. It had my picture on it, and it probably said I was JAKA. I put on the new clothes, threading the new belt through the holster, and so on. I got a paring knife from the kitchen to cut off the tags. The wad I had taken from the guy I fought was at the bottom of the stack.

The clock on the mantel said it was almost three, and for a minute I thought it had stopped. I watched it until the minute hand moved. So I had slept all day and most of the night. I went into Naala’s room, being very quiet, and she was in there sound asleep and snoring.

After I had shaved I knew what I had to do. God knows I did not want to, but I had to. I found a new jacket in the closet. This new one was wool, too. When I went out I made sure the door had locked behind me.

The walk to the cathedral was long and dark, cold and lonely. I kept hoping to catch sight of the tower, which did not really happen until I was just about there. Then I saw it, dead black against the stars, and it seemed to go up forever.

The big door in front was locked, but there was a little path around to the side, and a little door there that was not. I went in and up a narrow, pitch-black stair, and found I was right underneath the tower in an alcove full of hanging ropes. It had no ceiling but just went up and up. It was still dark as hell in there, even though a little starlight sifted down. One side was open to the main part of the cathedral. It was dark in there, too, although a candle was burning on each side of the altar. I did not see the ropes until one bumped my face.

There was another stair off to the side. It was wider than the one I had just come up, but steeper, too, with nothing to hang on to. A cold stone wall on one side and a really good drop on the other. The steps were narrow, like they had been made for feet that were smaller than mine. I kept telling myself that if I fell I would grab one of the bell ropes, but I do not believe I could really have done it. Pretty soon I learned not to try to take those steps fast. You went slow or you stopped every so often and sat down on a step. Your choice. I went slow, feeling the wall with my left hand.

When I finally got to the top, it was maybe twice as big as I had expected. I have had hotel rooms that were a lot smaller than that. My bedroom in Kleon’s house had been smaller, too. There was a big hole for the ropes in the middle, and a walk all the way around it with a low wall around that. No rail on the bell-rope side. For a while I tried to figure out why it was the way it was. Then I realized that eventually the ropes must wear out, and when they did somebody would come up here with a plank and lay it across the hole so he could get to the broken rope, cut the knot and let the rope fall, and tie on a new rope. I would not want the job, but somebody must have done it. Of course you could reach some of the ropes just standing on the walkway.

So now I was up here, and there was nothing for me to do but wait. My broken watch had disappeared with my old clothes, but I figured it must be about four a.m. Or it could be five. I went to the front and stood there a while, looking out over the city. There were only two buildings taller than that tower in it, and you could see the roofs of all the rest. Later on, when the sky started to get light, you could see down a lot of the streets, too.

That was when I moved to the back to wait. At first I tried sitting on the flat coping back there, but it was too high for my feet to reach the walkway. So I just leaned against it and checked my gun, and put it back, and waited.

It seemed like a long time but it cannot have been, because the sun was not showing yet when I heard his feet on the steps down below. I knew that if he looked around, he would see me. That was when I looked around good myself and saw there was somebody else up there with me already. It was the third border guard, just standing in a corner. He did not say anything to me, and I did not say anything to him, either. The two of us just waited.