Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“Women. Showgirls, he called them. He was in a joint, and they got him to stand up and announce, and to tell a couple of jokes. Then he went backstage and the girls crowded all around him. He made it sound like there were about a hundred, but I doubt it. They took his clothes off. I don’t think he could get it up.”

“You don’t think?”

“He wasn’t too clear about it. I think he ran away—onto the stage again.”

“Sounds like fun. I wish I’d seen it.”

“Me too.”

“I’m not going to ask about you.”

“Thanks.”

Candy belched and giggled. “I guess I’m feeling a little better. Only it seems like the floor’s still tilted.”

“It is,” Stubb told her. “We’re still climbing.”

A new universe waited above the snow clouds. The moon shone brightly there, and all the stars were out. The clouds themselves had become the surface of the earth, as to our eyes the clouds of Venus are Venus herself. They were an unending mountain range, silvery white peaks linked by enchanted vales; and the air about them feigned never to have known the smoky filth of human life.

A single pencil wrote there, as though God were still at labor upon the Book of Genesis. It traced a narrow line across heaven, and this line too seemed silver and white in the moonlight, pure, only slightly bent against the night sky, untroubled as yet by any word that should produce a world.

The pencil drew a circle, perhaps. A great circle.

They rose to it. Once or twice the witch glimpsed the line of its tracing, but neither she nor the others saw the pencil itself, though it was far larger than a Boeing 747, though a 767 might have landed upon one of its wings, a DC 10 upon the other.

The sound of their engines altered subtly, waxed, waned, droned. Turbulence made their aircraft pitch and yaw; Candy clutched her belly with both her hands as if afraid she would be sick after all. Stubb wrestled futilely with a seat belt that could never be made to go around her. White knuckled, the witch clung to the sides of her seat. Barnes swore and muttered, stroking his chin, pulling his ear.

There was a clang, a bang as though the plane were about to break apart in mid air. The roar of the engines faded to a whisper. Outside the windows, there was only night, without moon or stars.

The young man in the flight jacket took a deep breath and said, “Well, we did it again.”

The four of them looked at him. No one spoke.

“I hope it didn’t scare you.”

Candy said, “I’ve been scared so long …” Her voice trailed away.

Stubb told her, “You didn’t act like it, sweetheart.”

“How could I act? Sicky. Woozy. That’s how I acted, but I’ve been scared ever since they put me in that loony bin. Even when I was stuck full of dope or half looped. I couldn’t get high enough to get away from it.”

The young man in the flight jacket cleared his throat. “Folks, I wouldn’t want to hear any classified information.”

The witch said, “You must be tolerant. We are all a bit on edge.”

“Me too,” the young man told her. “Well, it’s over now.” He thrust a key into a keyhole in the fuselage overhead. A section of it angled down, unfolding a thin stair of white metal. A faint light shone somewhere beyond the top of the plane.

The young man grinned. “This is a C-class Fort. The limejuicers didn’t want it, so your guys took out the dorsal turret and put this in. We’re magnetically coupled, and when you go up those steps, you’ll be walking right through the middle of the field. I’m supposed to warn you that it messes up watches. If any of you’ve got one you care about, you’d better leave it with me. I’ll return it when we come back to pick you up.”

Stubb said, “I don’t think—”

The witch said, “I do,” and slipped off a delicate little dial ringed with brilliants. She smiled at the young man in the flight jacket. “Already it does not keep good time, so perhaps I should wear it, no? Perhaps your magnetism would mend it for me?”

He smiled back and managed to touch her hand as he took the watch. “I doubt it, Ma‘am. It’s probably better you leave it with me.” He glanced at the watch’s tiny face, then at the chronometer on his wrist. “Twenty-four hundred. It’s not so far off, Ma’am.”

“And when shall you arrive to take us to solid ground again, Captain?” The witch had risen from her seat.

“It’s Colonel, Ma’am,” the young man told her. “I’m an Army Air Force officer, a Lieutenant Colonel, not a Pan Am pilot. We’ll come for you when they tell us to.”

Candy asked, “Do most people stay long?”

“Not most of them, no, Ma’am. Usually it’s just a few hours. But not very many go up there, and we never take some of them down.”

“Ahhh!” The witch breathed the word with a note of moaning wind. “Perhaps they come down without your assistance?” She made a pushing gesture.

“I doubt that, Ma’am. Now if you folks will just go up. We’ve already lost a little more time than we should have.”

Barnes and Stubb looked at each other, then at the airy metal stair. “I want to help Candy up,” Stubb said.

Barnes nodded, smiled at the two women, and went up briskly.

“I go next,” the witch said. “Oh, I am not brave! I only fear I will not go at all. Candy, can you climb them? With myself before and Mr. Stubb behind?”

“I’m cold sober. Of course I can.”

“I wish a kiss first, Colonel,” the witch said suddenly. “After all, it may be the last. And because I did not know of your rank.”

For an instant she smiled, and there was something so bewitching in her smile that it seemed strange she did it so seldom. She might, the young man thought, have conquered the whole world with that smile; he tended to think in such terms.

Then she threw her arms about him and kissed him. “You do not object?” she asked, still clinging to him.

“Why, no, Ma’am.”

“My breath is not sweet, perhaps. It is so late, and it has been so long since I have eaten. I cannot even recall the last time now. I am very tired, and yet I must do more tonight, and I cannot say how much more.”

The young man said, “Your breath is just as sweet, as—as a breeze in April.”

“Good.” She kissed him again. “I see you like it as well as I, but now I must go. You have been so kind. I would not wish to entangle you in difficulties with your superiors.”

She looked around. Stubb had started up the stair, reaching behind him to extend a hand to Candy. Because he was two steps higher than she, their eyes were at a level.

The young man said, “Uh, Ma’am, would you like a sandwich? I’ve got one up front.”

“Oh! Very much!”

“Just a minute.” He ducked through the doorway. The sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper, was Spam on dark rye. He handed it to the witch, who kissed him again, then started after the groaning Candy. When the witch was halfway up, she turned, took a dainty bite of bread and meat, and blew him a kiss.

He blew one in return and stood watching until the slender figure in dark fur and black lace had disappeared into the darkness of the gigantic aircraft above. Then he pushed the folding stairway up, relocked the hatch, and after a minute spent staring idly around the now-vacant plane, went into the cockpit.

A Navy officer waited there, leaning back in the pilot’s seat, his hands behind his head. He asked, “All finished, Bob?”

“Yep.” The young man sat down in the copilot’s seat.

“Took you long enough.”

“I guess.”

The Navy officer threw a switch on the control panel. Instantly they were dropping, then swooping downward in a long glide.