Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“I know she’s here,” the young woman in the tweed skirt was saying. “I phoned, and you connected me.”

“She doesn’t wish to see you,” the clerk said. He used the world-weary tone of one who drops a polite pretense. “She called and said we weren’t to give out her room number, and she’s not taking calls. If you went up there—if you found out the room number—you might make a scene, but you wouldn’t be admitted.”

“But this is Serpentina! She’s got to see somebody!”

Barnes cleared his throat. “You’re looking for Madame Serpentina? As it happens, I’m a friend of hers.”

The young woman looked around at him. Her face was lively rather than lovely, but it was a very attractive liveliness, reminiscent of blindman’s buff played at a fifteenth birthday party. “Can you take me to her? Will you?” The sub-assistant manager seized the opportunity to move away.

“Not so fast,” Barnes said. “I don’t want to inconvenience her, not unless there’s a reason for it. But I might be able to talk her into seeing you. Let’s go over there,” he gestured toward one of the vinyl couches, “and discuss it. Who are you?”

“I’ve got a card,” the young woman said. She opened a purse nearly as big as Candy’s and jerked out a compact, a glasses case, and a package of nonnutritive gum. “Here they are!”

The card read:

Associate Editor

with the usual address, telephone number, and so on.

“Miss Duck?” Barnes murmured uncertainly, returning the card.

“That’s Ms. Duck,” the young woman said, “and no quacks. Sandy Duck. If you’re really a friend of Madame Serpentina’s, call me Sandy.”

“Call me Ozzie,” Barnes told her. “Madame Serpentina does.”

“Swell.” Sandy Duck held out a hand in a knit acrylic glove.

Barnes shook it solemnly. “Is that a magazine or a newspaper? Hidden Science and Natural Whatever It Was?”

“It’s magazines. Or I should say they are. We publish them in alternate months. Hidden Science in January, March, May, and so on, and Natural Supernaturalism in February, April, June, and like that. It has to do with shelf life. The supermarket kids will leave the January-February issue of HS standing right next to the February-March issue of NS . Or anyway, we hope they do, and sometimes it works.”

“Supermarket kids?”

“The ones that straighten the magazine racks in the supermarkets. That’s where we sell, mostly. To women in the supermarkets. What’s she like?”

For a moment, Barnes thought wildly that he was being asked about his ex-wife.

“Madame Serpentina,” Sandy explained. “She’s getting to be quite famous, you know. I’ve met a dozen people who’ve met her, but you’re the first who claimed to know her well.”

“Well, she’s very beautiful … .”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Black hair, dark complexion, dark eyes, and she has a wonderful figure. You think of her as tall, but she isn’t really. Just medium height, maybe two or three inches taller than you are.” He paused to reflect. “She doesn’t exactly have an accent, but I don’t think English is her native language.”

“Don’t you know?”

Barnes shook his head. “It isn’t something you can ask somebody right out, now is it? She doesn’t talk about herself—or only once in a while. Sometimes she doesn’t talk at all. She’s imperious, very queenly.”

“Do you—” Sandy broke off to look at the fat girl looming beside her.

“Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We’re off to see the wizard.”

“Who was Joe, and what did he want?”

“It’s Jim, I thought it was. He’s up there. He phoned down, and we’re supposed to come up. Say bye-bye to your little friend.”

Sandy jumped up. “Is that where she is? Madame Serpentina? Seven seventy-seven?”

“Ozzie, who is this?”

“I’m from Hidden Science . One of our readers tipped me that Madame Serpentina was here. I telephoned, and a man’s voice said to come over, that he’d get me in to see her.”

Candy pursed her mouth. “That must have been Jim.”

“Who’s Jim?”

“A friend of ours. Maybe you ought to come with us.”

“Come in,” Stubb said, and all three tried to crowd in together, Sandy Duck caught and crushed between Candy and Barnes.

“God, but I’m glad to see you,” Candy said. She sat on a bed, kicked off one of the galoshes the police had given her, and began to rub her plump, pink foot.

“What are you doing here?” Stubb asked Barnes.

Candy grunted, obstructed by her belly as she tussled with the other galosh. “I made him come, Jim. I was talking to him while you were up here, and he hasn’t anyplace to stay tonight. He just parked his sample cases and stuff in the bus station.”

Their hostess snorted like a small, well-bred horse. “Am I to have this mob domiciled with me?”

“Not me, Madame Serpentina,” Sandy Duck declared. “I only want to interview you—I told you over the phone.”

“And I told you that I do not grant such interviews. I am a witch, not a politician!”

There was a brief flash and the click of a shutter. Sandy lowered her little one-ten and looked at it with satisfaction. “That’s great, I think. With your head back like that. It looked like you were exorcising.”

“I would gladly ring my bell and light my candle, if they would make you go. Ozzie, I certainly did not invite you to my room, but now that you have come, please get this creature out.”

Barnes smiled. “I’ll be happy to, Madame Serpentina. But of course it might be better not to have a commotion. I think the best way might be to work out a compromise that would leave good feelings all around, and since you’ve laid it in my lap—if you’ll excuse the expression—here’s what I propose. Let Sandy ask three questions. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t pack them, doesn’t ask two questions as if they were one. You answer them fully and fairly, and when you’ve answered the third, Sandy will go out with no urging. Won’t both of you agree that’s reasonable?”

Stubb chuckled. “You should have been a diplomat, Ozzie.”

“She must also promise not to harass me in the future.”

Still clutching her camera, Sandy raised her hand. “I won’t harass. I may ask to see you, but if you say no I won’t push.”

“All right then, it is agreed—with the proviso that my answers need satisfy only my own sense of my own worth. I cannot promise they will be satisfactory to you.”

“Okay!” Barnes was beaming. “What’s the first one, Sandy?”

“Wait a minute.” The associate editor’s fingers fluttered as she jammed her camera into her purse. “I have to think … .”

“I have not got all night.”

Stubb added, “Hell no. There’s something I have to talk over with the rest of you when this girl’s gone.”

“Well, I have to think about it. I came up here with a list of about a hundred questions. Now I’m only going to get to ask three. The least you people can do is give me time to decide which three it’s going to be.”

“I said, I have not got all night!”

“Hey,” Stubb put in. “I’m hungry as hell—I don’t think I’ve eaten since breakfast. While she’s making up her mind, how about getting on that phone and asking room service to bring up a club sandwich and a cup of coffee?”

Candy laid a pink hand on the telephone. “Wait a minute, if anybody’s going to eat around here, I’m in. There’s probably a menu in this drawer.”