Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“Anybody wanna buy a bat?”

“There was a window in that doctor’s office.”

“To hell with that. Where’s the stairs?”

“Please! Please! We have an emergency generating system. The lights will be back in a moment.”

Sandy said, “My gosh, I hope he’s right.” She had lost contact with Stubb and Barnes, and with the wall as well. With each tentative step she felt sure her hands would encounter it, but there was only more space. It seemed colder already.

“If you’re in your room, please stay in your room.”

“Harris, is that you?”

“I’m just trying to maintain order, shit-face. O-w-o-o-o! ”

“Stop that! Harris, go back to your room.”

Someone bumped into her. It was the second time in five minutes that she had been bumped, but she was too frightened to be angry. The bumper caught her before she fell. “Lady, where’s the steps?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m trying to find them myself.”

“You nurse?”

Then the lights came back. She was in the middle of the hall, with patients milling around her. The man before her was the man with pierced ears.

The lights went out again.

“Sit down!” Dr. Bensen ordered.

Scuffling and a thump.

“What did I trip over?” Sandy asked.

“Me,” someone said. “Sit down!”

“I was trying to find a way out.”

“We all were. But as long as the lights are out, there’s no way out.”

“Heavy,” someone else said. “Who’s that?”

“Not heavy, just true, all right? This is the eighth floor—”

“Sixth, I think.”

“Who are you?”

“—the elevators aren’t running, and the door to the steps is locked. As long as the lights are off, we can’t get out.”

“So you might as well sit down and stay down. That’s what we’re doing. At least you won’t break your nose.”

A yowl, a louder scuffle, and a thud.

“Not on me! Nobody said for you to sit on me!”

“I hit my elbow on this God-damned floor. None of you gives one damn, do you? I could have broken my arm.”

“Is that a man or a woman?”

“A woman. You can tell by the voice.”

“A man. It’s too big for a lady.”

“Probably Emma Cook. She’s as big as a house.”

“Or Corky Davis. He’s as big as two houses, but he pretends to be a woman all the time.”

“Or Candy. That you, Candy?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Candy said.

“No, it’s not. I’m over here. You want to feel me?”

“Hey! Hands to yourself.”

“Move over so I can sit down.”

“I think we ought to go around the circle—are we in a circle? And tell who we are.”

“I am the Page of Wands.”

“You sound more like a woman than a little boy.”

“Let’s go around. Not all of us are crazy. We ought to be able to weed out the nuts soon enough.”

“Is that you, Mr. Stubb?” Sandy asked.

“I’m Candy—over here.”

“No, my name is Dr. Robert R. Roberts.”

“Oh, you can’t help that, we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad!” Sandy objected. “What makes you think I am?”

“You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here. M-e-e-ow!”

“Come on, let’s go around,” Stubb said. “I’m Stubb.”

“Wallace J. Willis.”

“Joan Giraud.”

“Page of Wands.”

“Candy Garth.”

“Klipspringer.”

“Nimo.”

“Maude Gonne.”

“Carlton C. Katz.”

“Hey, Stubb, hasn’t it got back to you yet?”

“No.”

“No!”

“NO!”

“Corona Borealis.”

“Osgood M. Barnes,” Barnes said firmly.

“Jake Barnes.”

“Candy Garth.”

“Hey, you’re not me!”

“She’s not me either.”

“Candy, was that you?”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Stubb, this isn’t going to work.”

“Who’s that? Ozzie?”

“Yes.”

“Here!” Little Ozzie called.

“Hey, a kid!”

“I’m Ozzie Barnes.”

“Little Ozzie, come over here,” Barnes said. “It’s Daddy.”

“Over here, Ozzie!”

“Right here, Ozzie!”

“Ozzie, you got him?” Candy asked.

“No!”

“No!”

“Right,” Barnes told her. “Everything’s okay.”

“Little boy, is that your dad?”

“I think so.”

“It’s a wise child that knows his own father.”

“Who was that?”

“Page of Wands, I think,” Sandy said. “Mr. Stubb, this isn’t going to work. We’ve got too many liars.”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll say.”

“Besides, Mr. Stubb, supposing that each of us was known to all the rest, by whatever label the world has fastened to each, of what good would that be?”

“Madame Serpentina?”

“No,” the witch said.

“Sure you are. I’d know your voice anyplace.”

“I am the person you have been accustomed to call Madame Serpentina, though that is not my name. There are others here who call me by another—which is not mine either. In the dark? Who can say?”

“What shall we call you?”

“Why need you call me anything?”

“Well, you’re here, anyway. Did you get the Gypsies loose?”

(A moment of silence.)

“She’s gone.”

“We are free—if to be free is to be free as you are. But a Gypsy cannot be free under a roof.”

“Hey, that’s profound! By God, I knew somebody’d say something profound if we kept at it long enough.”

“A wife is a woman who has only been wrong about one thing in her whole life.”

“That’s profound too.”

“Death is to life what potatoes are to breakfast.”

“Going broke would be like going crazy, if you could push your purse in a sow’s ear.”

“Knock it off, people!” Stubb ordered.

“What for? You got a better idea?”

“Philosophy is where you go when every other mind is closed.”

“You won’t ever get these crazies to talk sense, Stubb. And anyway, what could you do with them if you did?”

“We already said that. That was sensible, no?”

“Christ, I wonder how long this thing’s going to last. The lights must have been off for half an hour already.”

“There’s a clock over the nurse’s desk. If somebody has a watch, he could compare it with that. If he could see it.”

“What’s it like outside, you think?”

“Cold.”

“I mean, are they busting the windows on the TV stores? That stuff?”

“I’ve been listening, and I keep hearing sirens.”

“Put wax in your ears.”

“I already got wax in my ears.”

“Doesn’t help, huh?”

“Somebody help him, or we’ll be driven on the rocks! Doctor! Doctor! Where the hell are the doctors?”

“Where do you think? They’re right here with us.”

“They are us.”

“We has met the enema—”

“Somebody said he was Dr. Bob.”

“That wasn’t him. I know his voice.”

“Didn’t he get bit on the arm?”

“That was Alma-Mae Jackson.”

“I didn’t think she’d bite anybody.”

“She might slap them around a little.”

“That’s different.”

“Listen to the sirens … .”

“I want to get out.”

“Are you kidding? It’s a madhouse out there.”

“Me too. This is Stubb—Jim Stubb, the private investigator. Who are you?”

“Gypsy Pete.”

“Hey, I want to join the Gypsies.”

“You don’t join the Gypsies. The Gypsies are like a family. You got to be born.”

“I’ve heard of people that joined the Gypsies. The Gypsies like them, see, and they say, come on, be a Gypsy. And they do.”