Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

“Do you know where this house is?”

She studied him. “If you’re thinking about seeing Klamm at his house, forget it. He’s the President’s security advisor, which means that a dozen different groups are gunning for him, including North’s. He’s guarded around the clock.”

“But he might talk to me, if I rang his doorbell. I don’t want to kill him, I just want to ask him a couple of questions.”

“Well, I don’t know where he lives. And I’m sure you can skip looking in the phone book.”

“You must have some idea.”

Fanny shrugged. “There’s a couple toney suburbs down south. A big place like that would just about have to be in one or the other, but I don’t know.”

“Where is his office?”

“In the Justice Building. I’ve never been there—I mean, I’ve been in the Justice Building, but I’ve never been inside Klamm’s department.”

“I’m going to try to see him tomorrow.”

“Okay, if you want to. I’ll give you a ride to Justice.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Have you had lunch? I haven’t even eaten breakfast. I was supposed to after I’d waited on you, but I had to report first, and they’d closed the hotel when I came back.”

“I thought you told them to close it, so you could pick me up. In the car you said they’d just decided to close, but that was while you were still pretending to be a waitress.”

Fanny shook her head. “We believed them, that’s all. They said you’d checked out. We should’ve realized it was a case of men protecting a man, but we didn’t.”

“They knew they were protecting me by locking me out of the hotel?”

“They knew we were there to watch you.” She shrugged. “I suppose they thought that if they locked up you’d go somewhere else and get away, without having to be warned by somebody you might finger if you were picked up. Anyway, when I got back to the coffee shop, they said you’d gone and they were closing. I asked why they hadn’t told us, and they said they didn’t know where we were. It was all horsefeathers, but there wasn’t time to argue.”

“That was why the clerk pretended he didn’t hear me, then, when I pounded on the door.”

She nodded.

“But I didn’t get away. You gave me a ride, and here I am.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that, but it won’t wash. You made me.”

He was puzzled.

“You spotted me for an officer, there in my car. You could have knocked me over with a duster. I still don’t know how you did it.”

It was an invitation to boast; he knew it and declined it. He said, “But when you drop me off, you’ll tell somebody else, and they’ll follow me. Maybe they’ll help me, just like you did when you gave me a ride; but I won’t know who they are. You’ll tell them when you plan to leave me at Klamm’s office.”

“I told you—see how much you learn by hanging out with a cop?”

“Why?”

“So you’ll lead us to North. You don’t matter; there are a million like you.” Fanny paused to smile at him. “I’m assuming you’re not a Visitor, notice? I hope you appreciate it. Anyway, there are thousands like you and Applewood and the rest. North’s different—different in a way that makes him terribly dangerous, the sort of megalomaniacal leader who appears once in a lifetime. North could wreck everything. I know this sounds crazy, but he could end civilization. He could start the whole human race on the downhill path.”

He nodded and asked, “What does he want?” then answered his own question. “Power—I saw enough to know that. Still, you’re wrong if you think I’m going to lead you to him. I’m not going anywhere near North if I can help it.”

Fanny grinned, her piquant face to one side. “Slaves don’t usually go running back to their masters—but now and then their masters come to fetch them, or send somebody they can trust. We get them up here every so often.”

“Get who?”

“Runaway slaves and people looking for them.”

It would not sink in, or perhaps he did not want it to sink in. “You still have slavery here?”

“Not here —it’s a state option.”

“Black people for slaves?”

Fanny shook her head. “It isn’t really determined by race, it’s a matter of legal status. But most blacks are slaves, yes, and most whites are free.”

He said slowly, “In the world we were talking about, where the Visitors come from, everybody’s free. Or so I’ve heard.”

“That’s the way it is here, in most states. But if a state wants it the other way, it can make slavery legal; then anybody who owns slaves can bring them there without losing them. It’s good for the economy, but it’s a little messy sometimes.”

“The Civil War. You didn’t have the Civil War.”

“No, that was Britain.”

“And men die young here. That’s how it seems.”

Fanny stood up and picked up her purse. “Nature played a dirty trick on the human race, Mr. Pine. She gave you men more strength than most women, and what’s much more important, more drive, more ambition. But when you’ve fulfilled your biological destiny—when either sex has fulfilled its biological destiny, actually—it dies. That means sixty or seventy years for us, sometimes only fifteen for men.”

“I heard once on the news that there are nearly a hundred and fifty women over sixty-five for every man.”

She ground out her cigarette. “Who said that, Ken Rather? It’s not really that bad, lots of men hold out for their entire lives, damn them. Now come on, let’s go get some lunch before I start thinking you really are a Visitor. There’s a nice little Italian joint, Capini’s, a couple of blocks uptown.”

Fanny had slurred the name, saying it quickly and carelessly, and he had thought nothing of it. It was not until they were inside that he realized it was the restaurant where he often ate, the place to which he had brought Lara.

One of Mama Capini’s sullen sons showed them to a window table. He ventured to inquire, “Is your mother here?” but the son turned aside without answering.

Fannie asked, “You’ve been here before?”

“I think so,” he said. For safety’s sake he added, “These storefront spaghetti places all look about the same to me. It was good, though.”

“You said you had money; so we’ll split this, if that’s all right with you.”

“No,” he told her. “I’ll pay.”

“I should warn you, I eat like a fire.”

Looking at her small mouth and slender neck, he doubted it; and when the waitress arrived, Fanny ordered a pasta salad and tea. He asked if the fettuccine Alfredo was good today; assured that it was, he said he would have that.

“And I thought I was hungry.” She lit a cigarette, using the kind of bulky, reliable lighter he recalled from childhood. “Can I ask why you keep staring out the window?”

He had been trying to read the winter-grimed license plates of passing cars, hoping they would betray whether they belonged to his own world or hers. “Just keeping an eye on traffic,” he said.

“See anyone you know?”

He shook his head.

“When you lunch with a good-looking woman, you’re supposed to look at her, even if she’s not so stylishly dressed. You’re even supposed to make conversation, when your mouth’s not full.”

“I think you’re dressed very nicely,” he told her. She was still in the plain black silk frock she had worn in the coffee shop, having removed only the little lace apron and cap. Her serviceable tweed coat was draped over the back of her chair.

“My all-purpose undercover outfit.”

Mama Capini came bustling out of the kitchen and waved as she veered toward them. “Ah! It’s you.” Her smile showed a gold tooth.