Gene Wolfe - An Evil Guest

“I am Hanga.” He extended his hand, apparently unaware that men are not supposed to initiate handshakes with women.

She accepted it, and they shook. “I’m Cassie Casey, Hanga. Pleased to meet you.”

For a time they sat in silence, side by side, staring out at the sea. At last he said, “Which is more beautiful, Cassie Casey? Is it the sea or the land?”

“They’re both so lovely...”

He nodded.

“Which do you think, Hanga? You’ve seen more of them than I have.”

He chuckled, a deep and echoing chuckle like surf on a rocky shoe. “What I think is not important, Cassie Casey. I say after.”

“But what I think is?”

He nodded solemnly.

“All right. The sea is very, very beautiful. I just had a dream about it, the most beautiful dream I ever had in my whole life.”

He nodded again.

“I adore this sea. It’s the South Pacific, right? It’s like the sky, like the sky had a sister. It’s as beautiful as water can possibly be. But the land is my home. You’ve got to love your home best, because it’s home. Does that make any sense?”

“You are wise, Cassie Casey.”

“I’m not, but I’m smart enough to know I’m not. We had a puppy once. He wasn’t wise at all, but he knew he was just a puppy and he would beg me sometimes to take that into account. He had chewed my shoe, but he hadn’t known he wasn’t supposed to. Are you smart, Hanga?”

He shrugged. “There are many things few understand that I understand. There are many things many understand that I do not understand.”

“I’ve got it.”

“It does not trouble you that I am on this beach, Cassie Casey?”

“Heck no. Why should it? It’s your beach.”

The chuckle came again. “It is the hotel’s beach. The village people may not use it. The people of Kololahi may not use it. Only guests of the hotel. Only them, Cassie Casey. Not even those who labor for the hotel may use it.”

“Are you a guest?”

“No. They do not see me.” He sounded amused.

“And you’re afraid I’m going to tell them. I won’t. Honest Injun.”

“I am not afraid.”

“Good! You shouldn’t be. These are your islands. I’m here as a guest, Hanga. If you and your people don’t want us here, you have a perfect right to tell us to go home.”

The voice of the woman from Perth reached her, faintly but distinctly. “ She keeps talking and talking .”

“I guess I do talk too much,” Cassie said. “You talk, Hanga.”

“Would you wish the hotel guests gone, Cassie Casey? All save you?”

“So I said, no, of course not,” Cassie told Zelda Youmans thanks to the miracle of cellular-telephone technology. “And he said I was the high queen, and if I asked the hotel they’d do it.”

“You’re high queen?” Zelda sounded incredulous still.

“Of these little islands, that’s all. Wally did it somehow, and I’m pretty darned sure he’s high king. Only this hunk — ”

“Hanga.”

“Yes, Hanga. He never called me queen. All the others do. Can I say natives or is that insulting?”

“You can say it to me.”

“Fine. They’re my people and I don’t want to insult them, besides they’re awfully nice and scary big. You’ve seen Tiny.”

“Sure.”

“He’d be an average guy here. There’s plenty bigger than him — than he is. Only it seemed like I’m not Hanga’s queen, he just knew I was. Then he told me a whole lot of spooky stuff about the Storm King and how this darned Squid God — that’s what he is — has it in for Wally and me. For the high king’s what he said. He told me the Storm King’s real name, but I’ve forgotten it and couldn’t pronounce it anyway.”

“You said this was scary.”

“It is. I just haven’t gotten to the scary part yet. When you sit on the beach here, a waiter comes about once an hour and asks if you’d like a drink or something to eat. You can order and he’ll bring it. Hiapo — that’s my waiter — came and I thought it would be nice for me to order Cokes for Hanga and me and charge it, because I was pretty sure Hanga wasn’t staying at the hotel and wouldn’t have much money. I don’t think the people here — they’re Takangese, that’s the word. I don’t think these people care a lot about money.”

“They probably don’t need much,” Zelda said.

“Right. So I ordered a Diet Coke and started to ask Hanga what he wanted. Only he was gone. He was nowhere in sight...”

“He just left quietly, Cassie. That’s not scary.”

“He was a great big man, like a linebacker. He’d been sitting on the white sand right beside me, only there were no marks in it there. They rake it at night, Zelda. To get all the footprints out and rake up the junk the guests have left. Cigarette butts and swizzle sticks. All that stuff.”

“I’ve got it.”

“And there were no marks where Hanga’d been sitting. None at all. I could still see the rake lines.”

“You fell asleep, Cassie, and had a dream. He was something you dreamed. You just thought you were awake. It was really the waiter who woke you up.”

“When he was gone,” Cassie said slowly, “this woman I’d met the other day came. I’d forgotten her name, but I remembered she was from Perth. It’s in Australia.”

“I know.”

“So that was how I thought of her then, the lady from Perth. Only I learned her name afterward. It was Florence McNair. She said I’d been chattering away, and at first she thought I was on the phone. Then she saw I wasn’t, I was just sitting there with my head turned to the left, talking and talking.”

Zelda said, “You were talking in your sleep. A lot of people do that.”

“I explained that there’d been a Takangese there with me, and I’d been talking to him. But she just looked at me funny and went down into the water. I watched her swim — she was a really good swimmer — and then she went under and d-didn’t...”

“You’re getting ready to cry, aren’t you?”

“Not me, Zelda. I’m tough.”

“Right.”

“So I jumped up and started yelling and ran out into the water, only t-two guys grabbed me and carried me back. There was a siren, like for a t-t-tornado or something.”

“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Cassie.”

“You mean I’m M-M-Mariah. I guess I am, only older and maybe a little sm-smarter. And n-not as l-l-lucky.”

“You don’t have to tell me this.”

“I want to. I kept yelling that a woman was drowning out there, and they showed me the lifeguard’s boat. It was like a canoe with a m-motor and a thing out to one side to k-keep it from t-turning over, and he was going a m-mile a minute.”

“Take it easy.”

“The s-siren w-was so l-l-l-l-loud — ”

“I’m going to hang up now,” Zelda said. “You can call me back later if you want to, or I’ll call you.”

The siren had filled her mind, precluding all thought. A middle-aged tourist with a beer belly had her left arm, a younger, leaner tourist her right. Someone had shouted, “He’s found her head!” and they had turned her away so that she would not see it.

That evening, as she went to the dining room, she had seen a weeping man escorted by friends. She had asked another tourist, a soft-featured gray-haired woman who was surely somebody’s grandmother, who the man had been; and the grandmotherly woman had said he was the dead woman’s husband, and that the dead woman was Florence McNair.

One of her waitresses, a girl fully as large as Nele, had asked politely where she had been when the shark alarm sounded.

And she had said, with a feigned confidence that surprised her, that she had been on the beach.