Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“I know all this, Mr. Illingworth,” the witch said. “In fact, I could deliver your lecture myself; but the powers you speak of are not here. I would sense them if they were. These can be no more than the acolytes of the acolytes. If they hold Free, they are nevertheless a great deal further from the truth, from the center of Authority, than he is.”

“My dear—”

“As for all those things you say they offer us, you have not so much as touched upon the crux. Wealth and power we have already too much of—we suffocate. Longer life? We outstay the lion and the elephant. Hardly a day passes that we do not meet some man or woman who should be dead, who has outlasted his own time by decades; you are such a one yourself, Mr. Illingworth. As for healing, it is not we who require it but the world, which requires to be cured of us. Serenity would indeed be a benefit, but we do not seek it; if we did, we might find it required us to abandon wealth and power, and we love them too much. No, what we require from whatever Powers may be entitled to give it is some indication of how far we may go. Like tigers, we must kill to live, and like rats destroy; but we do not know what is permitted to us, and that ignorance paralyzes those who might otherwise refrain, while the worst of us kill every living thing and ruin all they reach.” I have been inspired, she thought. I myself sought power and never knew a word of that.

“Mademoiselle,” Illingworth said softly, “look about you.”

Tall figures stood at the right side of the Packard, some almost at her elbow. They wore ankle-length capes, and their heads were the heads of jackals.

“Goodbye,” Illingworth said. “Need I tell you, Mademoiselle, that I wish you well?”

The witch nearly surrendered to a wild urge to lock herself in. “You are not going with me? Did I not hear you say you would not miss this for gold?”

“Perhaps I shall see you later tonight.”

One of the jackal-headed figures opened the Packard’s door.

“I know you,” the witch said. “Are you not the servants of Upuaut, the Pathfinder? Or should I call him here Khenti Amenti, the Ruler of the West?”

The jackal-headed figures said nothing, staring boldly into her face with bright eyes, then looking away. Their jaws moved, and it seemed for a moment that, even in the faint light reflected by the snow, she could see scarlet tongues caressing white teeth and hairy lips. She was no longer certain the jackal heads were masks and wondered if she had been drugged. She had eaten nothing, drunk nothing; yet perhaps some odorless gas had been released in the Packard, perhaps the cigarettes Illingworth had given her had contained some hallucinogen.

“You are of good omen, I know,” she said. “You lead the procession of Osiris.”

At that, the jackal-headed figures turned from her, falling into single file as they walked between the dark buildings. They were very tall, and their footprints in the snow seemed the tracks of beasts. The witch hesitated for a moment, then stepped from the running board to follow the last.

Standing motionless beside his car, Illingworth watched her go. I could never give it up, he thought vaguely. The old Packard; but soon nobody will be able to fix it for me. I could get a Ford. (He still thought of Fords as small, cheap cars, the coupes and hunchbacked sedans of his youth.) Ford be damned! I’ll get a Buick.

He took out his old-fashioned silver cigarette case again and lit a Player with the lighter built into the end. Someone had given him the case, and he tried to recall whom. Dion Fortune? When its flame was snuffed, the night was too dark for him to admire the art-deco design. Very modern though, he thought. More modern than anything they make these days. But smoking in the cold was bad for your heart; he had read that someplace.

He dropped the unconsumed cigarette into the snow and entered one of the dark buildings. A young man at a desk nodded to him. He nodded in return and went past him into another office where a duffle coat hung on a hook and an older man (though Illingworth thought of him as young) sat behind a larger desk.

Illingworth tossed the key onto the desk. “Well, sir,” he said, “I’ve done it.”

The gray sedan swung off the Interstate, then off the side road and into a plowed parking lot, now walled with snow. As Robin had predicted, Little Ozzie was still asleep on the back seat; and as she had suggested, Barnes covered him with his fur-collared coat.

“You think he’ll be all right?” Barnes pushed the lock button down; he tried to close the door quietly, and Little Ozzie hardly stirred.

“Of course. He’ll be warm under there, and anyway, we won’t be inside long. Besides, you can come out and look at him if you’re worried. I’ll give you the keys so you can run the engine a little.”

A blue neon sign blinked overhead: FLYING CARPET. One thousand feet above it, a big jet was coming in with its landing lights blazing and its windows shining.

It looks like a whole city, Barnes thought. Like the flying saucer in that movie.

He handed Robin out and closed her door as softly as he had closed his own. There were cars enough in the lot to show the Flying Carpet was doing business. He and Robin walked across the ice and the hard, black asphalt together.

Inside, it seemed a bar like any other. Robin found them a table near the little stage. There was a Reserved sign on it, but she handed it to a waiter, who took it without protest. The stage was dark, making the whole bar very dark.

“You phoned a reservation?” Barnes asked.

Robin shook her head. “They don’t take them. I come here a lot.”

“The sign said reserved.”

“For the owner and his friends. I’m a friend.”

“I see.” Barnes realized with some surprise that he was jealous.

“No, you don’t. Buck knows a hundred women. I’m one of the hundred. If he comes around, I’ll massage the back of his neck and rub his shoulders with the jugs, that’s all.”

“Bullshit!”

The waiter had reappeared; he said, “Yes, sir. Bullshot. Pink lady, Miss Valor?”

“What’s the new one you told me about, Jack? A screwdriver. I’ll try it. Ozzie, don’t be mad. Let me tell you something funny Jack saw one time. A crowd was sitting around in a bar—not this place, another one—listening to some guy with a guitar, and after a while one woman stands up and kind of staggers over to the bartender and says, ‘You got a screwdriver?”’

Three white musicians and two black ones were settling into the positions on stage: piano, drums, bass, saxophone, and vibraharp. The whites looked too young to be very good.

“So the bartender made her a screwdriver,” Robin said.

It was “Sophisticated Lady,” booming and whirling, filling the room with music somehow palely green, music like a perfumed green chiffon scarf, a swirling green chiffon skirt. The waiter brought their drinks; Barnes sipped and listened.

When it was over, Robin said, “Good, huh?”

“No mikes? No speakers?”

She shrugged. “This isn’t Symphony Hall, and they’re not recording.”

Barnes nodded.

“You know what it made me feel like?” Robin asked. “Delaguerra. Did you ever read that?”

Barnes shook his head. “Who’s Delaguerra?”

“A tough cop, a long time ago in a story called ‘Spanish Blood.’ A thirties story. Delaguerra said, ‘I never shot a deer in my life. Police work hasn’t made me that tough.”’ Robin grinned at him. “I guess I thought about that because I told you I was half Spanish, out in the car. That was why I read the story, back when I was just a kid—because of the title.”