Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

7/12/87 mem. Blue September. 12/11/87 chief Iron Boot. Arrested 6/6/88 ngri., U. Gen. Psychiatric Hosp. Expert shot, often carries two or even three guns. Expert knife thrower, may have knife strapped to wrist, arm, or ankle. Violent, uncontrollable temper. Extremely dangerous.

Name: “Wm. T. North,” “Bill North,” “Billy North,” “Richard North,” “Ted West.” Actual name unknown. Name first given is name most used.

Date of Birth: Unknown.

Place of Birth: Unknown, possible Visitor.

Height: 5’ 11”

Weight: 170 lb.

Hair: Dark, balding. Often wears moustache.

Eyes: Blue.

Complexion: Ruddy.

Scars, etc: Burns, palms of both hands. Misc. small scars on forearms, may be fresh. (North is self-mutilator.) Tattoo underside of right wrist “RN.” Often wears watch on this wrist to hide tattoo.

There was a picture of North (looking slightly younger than he remembered) and a set of fingerprints. He put the paper back into the folder and poked among the rest, wondering if he would find a similar report on Dr. Applewood or himself. He did not, but he discovered a sheet headed Daniel Paul Perlitz and stamped DECEASED. Dr. Applewood had called the man in uniform Daniel.

Suddenly afraid he was being watched, he closed the trunk. His uncomfortable warmth had vanished; he was chilled now as he returned to the rusted door, and eager to regain the warmth of the hotel and shelter from the wind. To reassure himself, he put his hand inside his overcoat and made certain his room key was still in the pocket.

The steel door was locked, and neither his room key nor the keys to the hunched brown car would open it. After a moment, he decided that the lot was probably reserved for employees and the concessionaires who leased the shops and offices of the arcade. No doubt they received keys to this door. He would have to walk around to the front of the hotel, and it appeared he might have to do it through the drifted snow.

Turning up his overcoat collar and adjusting the muffler (silently he blessed the woman who had persuaded him to buy it) over the lower half of his face, he circled the lot looking for a path cleared of snow. There was none, only the drive through which the four cars had come (now drifted half full wherever it ran at right angles to the wind) which appeared to wind away in the direction of a few scattered structures nearly at the limit of vision and almost lost in the white erasure of the snow.

The hotel spread long wings to either side. Not so long, perhaps, to someone strolling at ease down their corridors; and yet very long indeed for him, since he would have to walk twice their length through snow that in places rose higher than his waist. He tried it for a few steps, then abandoned the attempt. Sooner or later, the drive would surely join the highway that ran beside the sea.

As he crossed the lot, he considered the shortcomings of his equipment. The coat, the sweater, and the muffler had all been wise investments; but he should have chosen a cap in place of his hat, a fur cap with ear flaps that tied under the chin, or perhaps one of the woolen hoods the haberdashery had called balaclavas —he had seen a display of them and paid no attention to it.

He needed gloves as well. It seemed incredible to him that he had not thought of gloves; his fingers were freezing, though he had buried his hands in the pockets of the overcoat. Most of all, he needed boots in place of his shoes; his brief attempt to walk through the snow had filled his shoes with snow, and despite the exercise they were getting his feet were freezing. Worst of all, they slipped again and again, the smooth soles of his shoes refusing to hold the nearly invisible ice that coated the asphalt in random patches, refusing to grip the packed snow.

He had left the parking lot and entered the drive when he saw Fanny’s picture; he picked it up and discovered that he was holding just such a paper as had described North.

Associates members Blue September, Immortals, Iron Boot. Believed sympathizer.

Name: Frances Land, “Frannie Land,” “Faith Lord.”

Date of Birth: 7/9/64

Place of Birth: Marea AX

Height: 5’ 3”

Weight: 105 lb.

Hair: Black, curling.

Eyes: Brown.

Complexion: Fair.

Scars, etc.: Six fingers on right hand. Glasses for reading.

Shaking his head, he crumpled the paper and tossed it away. He had been wrong, completely wrong, about Fanny. He corrected himself—about Frances. Like Dr. Applewood, Frances had been an associate of North’s. No doubt it had been because several such people worked here that North had chosen to come here, to this God-forsaken resort hotel in winter, this huge old hotel so many miles from the city.

The blonde in the beauty shop had been someone from North’s organization too, then, since Fanny had been ordered (by whom?) to report to her.

Or Fanny was—what did they call it? Somebody who worked for both sides. Somebody who pretended to work for one while passing information to the other. For if Fanny had not come in the limousine, how had she come? And if the limousine were not Klamm’s, why did it have those papers in the trunk, papers from the FBI or the Secret Service—the Secret Police, whatever they might be called?

The drive was barely wide enough for one car, and the plow had thrown up snowbanks on each side higher than his head. He walked in a world of black and white, and it seemed to him after a time that he was no more than a bit player in an old movie, an old black-and-white movie. There was no color anyplace because the print had not been colorized yet and there was only the gray sky above, the blacktop beneath, and snow to either side. His shoes were black too, and the dark gray of his new coat looked almost black. Was it the beginning of the late movie? Or was it the end, when he (back in his apartment dully watching this old movie) would get up, yawn, and take his glass and the bottle off the coffee table, knowing how soon the lovers would embrace, the woman dressed as Liberty hold up her torch.

As he walked he looked from side to side, and after a time he realized he was hoping to find the other sheet that had blown out of the trunk, because it would have a picture of Lara. Two sheets had gotten away, one he had caught. The one he had caught had been North’s; one of those he had not caught had been Fanny’s—Frances’s. Surely then, the third sheet, which he had neither caught nor found, had been Lara’s, Lara last seen dancing across the asphalt, over the snow, dancing in the wind.

Its thunder behind him warned him just in time, and he dove into the snowbank on his left. The big, black limousine roared past, so close he felt its suction try to draw the shoe from one foot.

He climbed out. Not swearing, he was too happy to be alive—still alive!—to curse anything. A thin layer of ice had cut his left forefinger, and he sucked it as he dusted the snow from his coat with his bandaged hand. When he took the finger out of his mouth to examine it, blood welled from the cut and dribbled onto the blacktop and onto the white snow.

He had put the packet of handkerchiefs in the side pocket of his jacket with the map. He took it out and opened it, and wrapped his finger in one of the handkerchiefs.

If he had not been afraid of falling on the ice, he would have skipped. This (he thought) was why Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, William Powell and Myrna Loy radiated so much happiness—so much delight in those creaking late-night movies, shone so brightly even in black and gray when they should have been dead. How happy they were to be still alive, there in the flickering celluloid, there on the cramped screens that had been tacked to the radios they had known, how joyful!