Gene Wolfe - An Evil Guest

“Correct.”

“Well, why bother? If he found out how to do those things on that crazy planet — ”

“Woldercan.”

“If he found out on Woldercan, why don’t they go there and find out like he did?”

They had turned onto the abandoned highway as she spoke. Now Gideon braked to a stop and turned in his seat to face her. “You thought of that for yourself.”

“Sure. Anybody would.”

“Believe me, that’s far from true.” He seemed about to smile. “This is one of the things I love about you. You’re not at all intellectual — we intellectuals are, for the most part, fools — but every so often you show the most marvelous penetration.”

“You mean I’m right?”

“Certainly you’re right. I’ve been trying to persuade the president to appoint me ambassador to Woldercan. With the authority of the office behind me, I could go there and learn those things just as Bill Reis did. He doesn’t want to remove the current ambassador. He wants me to go there as his special representative or something of the sort — wants me to make his win cheap and easy for him, in other words.”

“Will you?”

“No. Absolutely not.” Gideon grinned. “Want to hear the secret of my success? Not that you need to.”

“You bet I do!”

“It’s cheap and easy. Never set yourself up to fail. Never!” He turned back to the road, and the black hopper glided forward again. “Do you have any more questions, Cassie? We haven’t long.”

THE air of Kololahi Aerodrome was warm and humid and stirred by a hundred breezes. They carried the salt tang of the sea, and soon had Cassie wondering what the airport at Springfield had smelled like. If it had smelled of anything but rain, she could not remember what it had been.

This smelled of salt waves and salt spray, and spoke of lazy mornings spent paging through fashion magazines under beach umbrellas.

She had brought three suitcases and a garment bag. After making sure that she had also brought money Gideon Chase found her a porter, a bronze-toned man somewhat larger than most refrigerators and somewhat smaller than most trucks. He crouched before her and kissed the ground at her feet, a mountain of rolling fat and bulging muscle; and by the time she had recovered from that, Gideon was gone and the black hopper rising into a cloudless sky. It shrunk to the size of a bird.

And vanished.

Seconds later, the faint boom of its vanishing reached her, and she was alone.

The porter rose. “Go hotel?”

Cassie nodded. “A good one, moderately priced, please.”

The porter shook his head. “You are high queen. High queen go Salamanca House.” He touched the name embroidered in red on his sleeveless white tunic. “Salamanca House most fine. I am Hiapo. I show you.” He hurried away and returned with a baggage cart on which was a folding chair.

At his insistence she accepted the chair on the cart. He stacked her suitcases behind her, draped her garment bag over one enormous arm, and pushed her slowly across the tarmac, down a narrow but well-paved road and along streets (in which tourists in shorts and big hats stared at her open-mouthed) to a sprawling and somewhat decayed white building of many spindly pillars and flourishing palms.

“Salamanca House!” he announced proudly.

Cassie thanked him and would have paid him, but he was already hurrying up a wide, white staircase with her bags.

She found him inside, speaking urgently to the girl at the desk in a language that was certainly not English. She tried to pay him again.

He backed away, managing to indicate by gestures and facial expressions that it was an honor to have served her, an honor that would be diminished were he to accept money for it.

“You are our queen,” the girl behind the registration desk whispered. This girl appeared to be about eighteen; she wore a hibiscus behind one ear and had huge brown eyes in a broad face of lighter brown. India Dempster would have looked small beside her.

Cassie cleared her throat. “I have no reservation, unless perhaps Dr. Gideon Chase made one for me? My name’s Cassie Casey.”

The girl smiled. “The royal suite has been prepared for you, O Queen.”

“I would imagine the royal suite is a bit more than I can afford.”

The girl looked shocked. “There is no charge for the royal suite, O Queen.”

“My bags — ”

“Have preceded you. Hiapo took them, O Queen. I will show you to the royal suite. Will you require one maid or two?”

The elevator was a large and luxuriously furnished cage of gilded, over-wrought iron. It appeared to be at least two hundred years old.

“We have not yet a private elevator for the royal suite,” the immense girl whispered. “We proffer abject sorrys for that. This is ordered, but a ship have not arrived that carry him. Very soon.” She let down a dully shining gate of twining iron vines with a scarcely audible clang.

Cassie said that was quite all right.

“You are most kind, O Queen. This we are told, and so it is. True? I am manager. I am Naylay. What you wish, O Queen, I have for you.”

“Nelly?”

“Yes.” The girl smiled. “Naylay.” She patted her ample chest, found a name badge that appeared to designate her right breast, and displayed it: Nele . “Will our high queen require both maids now?”

SHOPPING was not so much easy as ridiculous. Cassie exchanged five hundred American dollars for a larger sum in Australian dollars. After which, she visited four shops in which whatever she liked was given to her without charge.

Now these gifts were spread on the enormous bed in what had proved to be the hotel’s penthouse: five flowered gowns of gauzy material, a gleaming white purse amply large enough to hold her little automatic with much else, and two pairs of white sandals with low but distinct heels. Three of her five new gowns had plunging necklines; all had full skirts.

She had particularly liked the pale yellow one with the foliage and red flowers. After showering and drenching herself with Lily Delight she put it on and posed before the pier glass in her new boudoir. She did not look like a queen, she decided. Most especially, she did not look like the queen of a nation whose children rivaled linemen in the National Football League.

But she looked quite nice.

She had never used much mascara, and did not use much now. A little face powder and a touch of New Rose Number Ten. Her hair, she decided, needed a good brushing. The hand bell summoned Ku’ulai, who brushed it thoroughly and reverently.

“How should I wear it, Ku’ulai? I want to get it up off my neck.”

“I show.” Ku’ulai began to rearrange.

“Will the high king come for me?”

“Who can say, O Queen?”

“Not me, obviously. Not so long ago — it seems like years now — Gideon Chase wanted to know if I had any more questions. I said no, not having asked a one that I should have asked. But he probably didn’t know, or he would have told me.” Cassie glanced at her watch. “It’s evening now, where I came from.”

Ku’ulai giggled.

“Very late, and winter’s coming on. Here it’s what? A little past lunch, I suppose. I should have asked them at the bank.”

“Like eat?”

“Much too much,” Cassie told her darkly.

THE answers came slowly and from a variety of sources, but they came. The bank knew a little. The Office of Tourism probably knew a great deal more, but he (an elderly man who sat fanning himself slowly behind a desk piled with brochures) had difficulty understanding her questions, and she had even more understanding his answers. Nele was too polite to be particularly informative, and Ku’ulai was too provincial to understand why her high queen should inquire about things everyone knew. The tourists positively scintillated with information, much of it contradictory; even worse, they overflowed with questions.