Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“And what’s that?” Barnes asked. “Or is it a big secret?” He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt.

“It’s no secret and it’s just a guess. But I think it’s a good guess. Who’s not here, Ozzie? Which of us isn’t here?”

Barnes’s eyes rolled as he looked about the room,the glass eye not quite tracking with his real one. “Why, we’re all here,” he said. “Everybody’s here.”

Stubb shook his head.

Candy asked, “You don’t mean Mrs. Baker?”

“Close, but no cigar. Who was she looking for? Who were the women who came and talked to her looking for? Last night, folks—just last night—there were five of us living together in the same house. Who’s missing?”

Barnes nodded. “Free, of course. I guess I didn’t think about him because we’d already talked about him when Mrs. Baker was here.”

“We’re going to talk about him some more. I didn’t want to do it then because that Duck girl was in the bathroom and so forth. But that’s why we’re here.” Stubb walked across the room to the television set and switched it on. “I don’t like talking against noise any more than the rest of you—maybe less. If anybody can guarantee no one’s listening in, I’ll turn it off. Anybody want to try?”

No one spoke.

“It stays on, then. The last we heard, Proudy was a couple of rooms away, but he may have got closer by now. There’s half a dozen tricks for listening through a hotel wall, and all of them work pretty good.”

Candy blurted, “All right, Mr. Free’s not here—and I don’t give a damn about the God-damned TV. If you knew how much talking I’ve done against rock tapes and radios and everything else—What I want to know is why are we here. If the crystal gazer wants to put me up for the night, fine. I could have found some other place, but this is as good as any. Only if you’re going to tell me it’s out of the goodness of her heart, forget it. In the first place, I don’t think she’s got one. In the second place, if she does there’s no goodness in it.”

“Thank you,” the witch said. “I am delighted by your gracious acceptance of my hospitality.”

“Knock it off,” Stubb told Candy. “What the hell do you think the rest of us are—a choir? This is a business meeting. You and Ozzie might as well know right now that before you came up Madame S. and I formed a little partnership. We’re going to help each other instead of fighting each other, and we’re going to split whatever we make right down the middle. She didn’t get you up here, I did—the room is just in her name, that’s all. And I didn’t get you up out of the goodness of my heart either. I did it because we want to invite you in. You get to hear our offer, and if you don’t take it you can split.”

Barnes was suddenly alert. “All right,” he said. “What’s the offer?”

“Let me ask you something first. Did Free ever say anything to you that made you think he had something valuable hidden?”

Barnes shut his eyes as he cast his mind back. “Suppose he did. Why?”

“We think he did. I’ll give you this just to show we’re dealing off the top. One time Free told me he came from what he called ‘the High Country.’ He said he had a ticket hidden away that would take him back there if he wanted to go, but it was too late to use it. What do you think of that?”

Barnes shrugged. “What do you think of it? That’s what seems important to me. You were there and you heard him, and now you say you’re going to make me an offer. What do you think?”

“I haven’t got anything but guesses,” Stubb said, “but I’ll let you have them—I’ve given them to Madame S. here already.” He took off his glasses, inspected their lenses and put them on again. “Ever since I talked to him, I’ve been wondering what the High Country might mean, because if I knew that, I’d have a pretty good idea what kind of a ticket it would take to get you there. Madame S. has her own ideas, but I’ll lay off them—she can tell you herself if she wants to. In the first place, the High Country could really be another country—Switzerland, maybe, or someplace else that’s got a lot of high ground; maybe the highlands of Scotland. In that case, the ticket’s probably his passport. Anybody buy that?”

He looked at Barnes and Candy, but there was no reply.

“Me neither. Here’s another guess. Free could be a hillbilly—he talked like one. Maybe he was from someplace in the Smokies. Anybody like it?”

Candy said, “Jim, I think he talked different depending on who he was with.”

“You sure of that?”

“No. I can’t really put my finger on it. Maybe it was something I just imagined. Only that’s the way it seemed to me. I don’t have a hell of a lot of education, Jim. I dropped out of high school. And I don’t think you do either. So I think maybe when he was around us he talked a little simple, so we’d relax.”

“Fine. That’s a good point, and I want to come back to it in a minute. For now, let’s hold it and clear the decks a little. Anybody go for the hillbilly idea?”

“No,” Barnes said. “Go on.”

“Then where are we?” Stubb paused and looked at each of them in turn. A televised war crashed to a close, and an announcer began to speak earnestly about soft drinks. “If he wasn’t from someplace that’s really high up—here or in some other country—what’s left?”

“Craziness,” Candy said.

Barnes swiveled to look at her.

She said, “You ever talk to those old bag ladies in the street? I have, when I’ve had a fifty or hundred-dollar trick and three or four shots afterwards. I’ll be floating along, and I’ll sit down beside one someplace, or one will sit by me. One I met was a princess. One was the bastard of some President. All of them have some crazy story, and if I ever hear one that makes the bag lady not so important as she looks instead of the other way, I’ll give her a five if I’ve got one. But I don’t think I’ll ever need to.”

“You really think Free was crazy?”

Candy thrust her chins forward as she considered. “I’ll have to think it over. But right now, yes, I think maybe he was. He let us into his house, didn’t he?”

The witch said, “And described us to his neighbor long before he did so, or so it sounded when she spoke of it. Was it only I who heard her? Whatever else may be true, Free was not mad.”

Stubb nodded. “I don’t think so either. Of course, Candy, what you think is up to you. For me, as far as I can see, if the guy wasn’t really from the mountains someplace, and he wasn’t nuts, there’s only one thing left. He told me he came from the High Country, and he came for adventure, and other people did the same thing, and he had his ticket—that was what he called it—hidden away, but it was too late for him to use it.”

Barnes said, “Then we look for it. It’s probably in the house someplace.”

“We will. Or rather, I will, tomorrow when it’s light; and if it’s in the house, I’ll probably find it. But suppose I don’t? Suppose it isn’t in the house at all? He told me one time that everything valuable had been stolen from his bedroom one time when he was away. It would be a lot easier to find the ticket if we could find Free.”

Candy put in, “You said there was only one thing left, Jim. Lay it on us.”

Stubb smiled and leaned back. “He called it the High Country. Maybe we’d call it high finance, high society, or the high life. I think Free, and that name’s a ringer if I ever heard one, came from a wealthy old family, that kind that’s been playing ambassador and governor and maybe even President for so long they’ve forgotten who great granddaddy stole the money from in the first place. I think when he got out of Harvard, or maybe even before he got out, he went to the Good Will store and bought some old clothes and went on the bum. A lot of them do. Just for an adventure, like he said. And I think that whatever the reason was, he stayed a whole lot longer than most of them do. Maybe he got mixed up with some woman. Maybe he was dodging something up there where he came from; maybe he didn’t want to spend his life running Amalgamated Copper or whatever it was. Then they decided he was dead, and he was ashamed to go home.”