Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

“That’s right. Only not in weather like this, of course. And not with a real bat, because someone might be hurt. But we have loads of fun. You see, the idea is for all of us on the staff to join all of you in recreational activities. That way, we get to know you better, and you get to know us better. Dr. Pille doesn’t really have to take part, but he’s such a good sport! So he comes whenever he can. Once he played run-sheep-run! But today we can’t have outdoor activities because of the snow, so we’ll have indoor moopsball. Won’t that be fun?”

“I’ve never played it.” Suddenly and irrationally, he was afraid that the bills were showing above the edge of the sheet. As unobtrusively as he could, he pushed them deeper.

“Then this is your big chance to learn, isn’t it! Up and out of bed, and don’t worry about your pajamas, everybody—I mean all the other patients—will be wearing the same thing.”

He had an apocalyptic vision of someone straightening up his bed while he was gone, and slipped the roll of bills into the waistband of his pajamas.

The nurse whispered, “This is the day. William will give you the signal.”

“All right,” the new nurse said loudly, “I want you to divide into two teams.” She plowed through them like a white hospital ship through a sullen sea, pushing patients and staff to left and right. He found himself in the group on the right, with North standing beside him.

“Now I’m going to appoint two captains,” the new nurse announced. “Dr. Pille, will you be one?”

The man who nodded was a slender, smiling Oriental.

“And you, Mr. Walsh. You be the other.”

“Sure!” Walsh called. “Come ’ere, ya tigers! Listen up.”

“You must each appoint a wizard.”

“Ya,” Walsh said, and touched him on the shoulder. “Ya my wizard.”

He asked what a wizard had to do.

“Put the whammy on the enemy. I’ll be out there leading the troops. Ya got magic powers I just invested ya with, kid.” Someone handed Walsh a red bat of soft plastic and a plumed red plastic helmet. “Thanks,” Walsh said.

“I’m not magic.”

“Not before, maybe, but ya are now. Lookit their guy, he’s working already. Ya gotta beat his spells, so get busy.” Walsh turned away. “I got three staff. Staff’s all cavalry, got it? Cohn, ya cavalry too! Cavalry, go get ya ’orses.”

The “’orses” were bright red and blue plastic tricycles. In the center of the floor, a couple of patients armed with plastic garbage-can lids and huge, soft plastic mallets were already flailing away at each other. Between them was a gaily colored plastic beachball, presumably the moopsball.

It was probably good therapy, he decided. How could you stay mad at a nurse or a doctor you’d just banged on the head with a plastic mallet? Nevertheless, he didn’t want to play. He yawned.

As if picked out by a spotlight, he saw the face of the blue wizard, the man Walsh had pointed out to him. It was a thin and even skeletal face, on a head that appeared to have been shaved. Its owner stood motionless in the midst of the hubbub, smiling a little, arms extended, eyes fixed upon him.

My God, he thought, it’s working! He began to dance as he had seen Indians dance in movies, stamping his feet, pumping his arms, patting his mouth as he yelled.

“Woo, woo, woo! Pawnee gitchya! Scalp ’um white man!” After a moment or two, he noticed that several members of the blue team had stopped playing to stare at him.

“Pretty soon they’ll put the captain of the winning team up on their shoulders and march him all around. Go to your room as fast as you can and get your street clothes on. Come to Door C . It’ll be open, and I’ll be right inside.” It was North, fading into the melee as he turned to look.

A red-helmeted mob surged about the wide plastic tube the blues had defended, red cavalry fending off blue players with padded broomhandles. Walsh, conspicuous in the plumed helmet, scored the goal.

The hallway was deserted, and he wondered whether North was ahead of him or behind him. Ahead, most likely. North had seen games before and probably had a better idea of what would happen when.

The roll of bills had slipped almost out of his waistband; it struck him that he had been an idiot to do that Indian dance when the money could have fallen out at every step. But it had not, and the dance had worked. He put the bills into his wallet in front of his real money, three singles, a five, and a twenty from the place North called C-One, the sane and sober reality in which Richard Milhous Nixon had twice been elected President.

There seemed to be no point in bothering with a tie—yet he did, knotting it swiftly but carefully before his dim reflection in the window. As he pulled it tight, he realized that in the depths of his soul he believed the last few days had been only a nightmare, that everything that had taken place since he had met Lara had been a dream, that he must soon wake up and go to work; and if he went to work without his tie, he would have to buy one in Men’s Wear.

North was waiting, dressed in a neat blue suit. “Here’s the keys. She says it’s a chocolate Mink. Middle of the lot.”

The keys shared their chain with a rabbit’s foot. He put the whole affair in his pocket as they clattered down the steps. “Won’t they hear us?”

“They’re still whooping and hollering about the game. The thing is to get out fast before they stop.”

Instead of turning off into the room in which he had drunk coffee with Joe and W.F., they emerged into a snowy parking lot from what was clearly the back of the hospital. The brown car was bigger than he had expected—yet hunched-looking, with its short hood, high trunk, and roomy passenger compartment.

He twisted the key in the ignition, but in vain.

“I thought you said you knew how to drive.”

“It won’t start, that’s all. Won’t even crank.” Prompted by a dim and almost racial memory, he stared down at the pedals. There were three, and a wear-polished steel button to the left of the clutch. He pressed it with his foot; the engine sprang to life.

“That’s better,” North said.

He nodded, wondering about the floor shift. It had been a long time since he had driven a stick, and that had been a short lever on the doghouse of a sports car. This was an ungainly rod topped by a knob of hard, black rubber. He tried out the gears.

“Get moving, damn it!”

“Do you want to get out of here, or do you want to have an accident?” The car rolled smoothly back; he clashed the gears a little shifting into first, but second and third were smooth and firm. “We’re thieves now, I guess,” he said as they turned out of the hospital’s parking lot. “If we don’t get sent back here, we’ll be put in jail.”

Edged into the corner, North grinned at him. “How do you think I got the keys? Or got that door unlocked? I got money too.”

“How much?”

“None of your God-damned business. You got any?”

He said, “Same answer.”

“You know, I kind of like you.” North chuckled. “Which is too bad because I’m going to have to bust your God-damned snotty nose for you someday.”

“I hope it’s not before you’re through having me drive for you. Can’t you drive? You said you could.”

“I’ve been through the FBI’s chauffeur course.”

He asked, “Then why’d you take me with you?”

“Because I felt sorry for you, you jerk.”

He glanced across at North and saw that North was no longer grinning.

A street he did not know unreeled before them; it was wide, with two traffic lanes on each side of two sets of shiny trolley tracks. There were trees, bare and yet snow-laden, between the street and the sidewalk. He thought of the streets he had seen radiating from the intersection outside the mental health center. This was one of them, he felt certain. But which? It seemed to him that though all had run straight, none had run in a definable direction—neither north nor south, east nor west. And yet this street had surely run to North.