Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“Where are we?”

“Eighties. Pretty far up. Four of them?”

“Right. Two men, two women.”

The old Fortress swung into a wide, easy bank. “What were they like?”

The young man considered. “Spies,” he said.

“Spies?”

“That’s what I’d say. You know, sometimes they look like diplomats, sometimes millionaires or politicians or whatever. Right, compadre? Well, these were spies. Not Army Intelligence. OSS, I guess.”

“How ’bout that. False whiskers?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. One had a mustache.”

“Come on, what were they like?”

“Okay. Seedy-looking guy with one eye. Face beat up, like he’d been in a fight. Average height or a little under, too old for the draft. Looked like he could be anything as long as it wasn’t too honest, maybe a bookie, something like that.”

“A pimp.”

“Maybe, if he had a little more scratch. Kind of good-looking, shiny black hair, Clark Gable mustache. He was the first one up the steps, and if it scared him he didn’t let it show much.”

“The other guy?”

“Jockey size. Thick glasses, trenchcoat.”

“What about his face?”

“I don’t remember—just the glasses. That was the whole thing about him. He was one of those guys nobody notices. Know what I mean?”

“I suppose. I didn’t see him.”

“Neither did I. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Okay, now the good part. What about the women? You said there were two.”

“Yep. One you had to notice. If you flew over the county fair and got a picture of the crowd and she was in it, she’d be the first one.”

“Nice looking?”

“I guess if she lost a couple of hundred pounds she might have been. Blond, must have been close to six feet.”

“That where you got the lipstick, Bob?”

“Huh?” The young man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You kidding me?”

“How’d I know? You got lipstick all over you. Want to borrow my handkerchief?”

“I’ve got one.”

“You figure this fat girl went around hiding behind doors and romancing generals? Over and above the light colonels, I mean.”

“It wasn’t her, it was the other one. Anyway, the fat girl was a nurse, and she looked like she’d been through hell getting here. Her coat up covered most of it, but the top of her uniform was ripped up, and the skirt was gone. I forgot to say the little guy was second up the steps. Now, he would be great at hiding behind doors or anything else. You’d never spot him. He was worried about the fat nurse and kept turning around trying to give her a hand.”

“Quit stalling, Bob. Get to the other one.”

“You want to be filled in or don’t you? Dark and pretty. Heck, not pretty, but she’d make a pretty girl look like something from the dime store. Beautiful. Like the Dragon Lady—foreign looking, with a little bit of cute accent. Around five six. Lots of neat little curves.”

“Russian?”

“She looked awfully dark for a Russian. Maybe Rumanian or something.”

The Navy pilot glanced at his altimeter. “Bob, what the hell do you know about Rumanians?”

“Nothing, I guess. Count Dracula—wasn’t he supposed to be Rumanian?”

“Hungarian, I think. She bit your neck, huh?”

“No, she just talked kind of like that. She let me keep her watch for her.” The young man thrust his hand into the map pocket of his sheepskin flight jacket. “It’s gone!”

The room was large and well-furnished in the heavy, masculine style Barnes had always imagined prevailed at the Harvard Club. It held leather armchairs, a massive walnut table, and a globe; the walls were paneled in walnut and hung with black-and-white photographs of battleships and parades. There was no sound of engines beyond a slight vibration, unchanging as the stale air, that shook even the heavy table ever so slightly. Only a few feeble yellow lights in the trembling chandelier seemed alive, ringed by dead companions.

He went to the globe and spun it. India was pink; so was one side of Africa, and the bottom. Had there really been such a green country as French West Africa? He had never heard of it, and yet it seemed to occupy half the continent.

The crown of Stubb’s balding head appeared in the hatch, then his forehead and the glasses whose opacity reminded Barnes of sunglasses, though they were without tint.

Then came Candy’s red, straining face, bedewed with sweat despite the cold, and the shoulders of her dark blue coat. It occurred to Barnes that it had been unfair to take his new clothes and give him back his old ones while letting Candy keep what must have been a stolen coat and the stolen nurse’s uniform.

He wanted to sit in one of the big leather chairs and welcome Stubb and Candy with a few well-chosen remarks, but he also wanted to search for Little Ozzie, though he knew he could not possibly be here. Torn between the two, he went to the hatch and helped Candy up the last two steps, then assisted the witch (who had just blown a kiss) in the same way.

“Thank you, Ozzie,” she said. “Those were a bit difficult with heels so high.”

She was holding a sandwich, and she held it as if it would turn pumpkins to coaches. At its wave the hatch closed, leaving only a smooth, inlaid floor.

“But what kind of place is this? A club for men, is it not? But where is the bar?”

Stubb had been looking around too. “On the other side of those doors, I’ll bet. Whoever lives here wouldn’t want to mix their own drinks, and they wouldn’t want the bartender to hear what they’re talking over. He brings‘em in, gives ’em out, and goes.”

Candy had sunk into a chair nearly wide enough to hold her. “Nobody here,” she gasped.

Barnes said, “Not when I came up either. They must be someplace else.”

Candy shook her head, fanning herself feebly with one hand. “Nobody. At all. Anywhere.”

The witch stared at her for a moment, then pressed her fingers to her temples.

When she let her hands fall to her sides again, Stubb asked, “Madame S.?”

“I do not know—it is difficult because you three are here too. Ghosts, yes. Perhaps someone also who is not a ghost, but much, much of the afterworld.”

Barnes objected, “Somebody told those people on the ground to send us up here.”

The witch nodded. “So they said, at least; but many have been telephoned by the dead. Who can say?”

“I can.” Candy stopped fanning herself and waved feebly at the other chairs, the table, and the globe.

Stubb said, “This isn’t all there is to it. It can’t be.”

“But it’s where they meet them,” Candy panted. “Who comes up here? Big shots. President—senators. They meet them here. So they’d think of meeting us—have somebody with a gun, like down below and in the plane. There’s nobody here, so there’s nobody here.”

Barnes objected, “Somebody has to fly this—this whatever it is.”

“They can fly themselves, if you want them to, with a computer or something.”

Stubb was peering through a doorway. “Not locked,” he said. “Little hall with lots of narrow doors.”

Barnes followed him as he opened one. The flare of a match showed a desk and chair, a map of Europe tacked to a wall of unpainted plywood. With both of them inside, there was barely room to turn around.

Barnes said, “When I was a kid, my dad took me with him when he went to see some lawyer. He had a chair like this.”

Stubb blew out the match, lit another, and picked up a letter from the desk. “Office of War Mobilization,” he said. “Ever hear of it?”

Barnes shook his head.

“Me neither. The date is June seventeenth, nineteen forty-three.”