Gene Wolfe - An Evil Guest

“There isn’t?”

“No indeedy. They should think a bit, eh? S’pose there was. Be dangerous to come too near. How’d he ship it out all at once? Lead boxes? Lead’s heavy as sin, and so’s gold.”

“I think I see.”

“So he don’t. He makes little bars. You could pick one up with one hand. Hides ’em in shallow water, all scattered ’round, so there’s not much radiation anywhere. Don’t have many anyhow, not at one time. When he wants ’em we dive down for him and bring ’em up. Off they go, one or maybe two. No more than that. Told me once he never keeps more than six on hand.”

Cassie thought. “Suppose somebody wants to buy a lot?”

“Oh, they get it, Your Majesty. But not all at once. One little bar at a time. What they do when they’ve got it’s up to them.”

LATER, when they had begun the climb, Cassie asked, “Why is the Squid God called the Storm King?”

King Kanoa smiled. “A legend, Your Majesty. Just a legend, though I happen to believe it myself. I’m a native at heart, you know, and blood will tell. He can fly, they say. Swim through the air, or whatever you want to call it. Hanga does it, too, and others. You don’t have to believe any of this.”

Cassie remembered wide leather wings and long-faced bats who rose like kites. “I believe everything so far. He can make it storm?”

“Bang on. He flies high and lets fly a cloud of ink.” King Kanoa paused, hiking up the steep slope manfully for all his two hundred kilos. “Had a class in astronomy once. Had to take it. Requirement. Clouds in space, eh? Dark clouds. Nobody’s sure what’s in ’em or how they got there. But I know, or think I do.”

Cassie shuddered, but said nothing.

“Ink blots out the sun, eh? Darkness over land and sea, cools the air under, and the winds come. Draws ’em, though I don’t know how. Winds bring rain, and the rain makes thunder and lightnin’.” He smiled. “Had a chap at Cambridge explain that once. Drops blownin’ up and down. Makes ’em charged. Static electricity. Ever stroke a cat in the dark?”

Cassie was still trying to think of a reply that would keep him talking when they rounded a point of rock and she caught sight of the palace.

Terrace after terrace rose up the topmost third of the mountain, garden terraces flaming with flowers and accented with palms, each with a white stone balustrade. There were white stone buildings scattered among them, buildings that did not quite look Greek or Roman, low and solid-looking buildings dotted with arches and striped with wide pillars.

“Oh, my gosh!” She spoke without intending to, and knew the inadequacy of any words of hers in the following instant. “Oh, golly!”

Close behind her, King Kanoa said, “Welcome home, Your Majesty.”

“I — I...”

“It makes me feel like that each time I see it. My people built it, you see. It was our high king’s money, that’s true. He furnished the materials and paid for their labor. But it was our hard work and our skill. And he’s our king, after all. We chose him, we lesser kings. The tourists... Well, he won’t let ’em gawk at it. I hope he’ll change his mind someday.”

The wind, and the sound of the surf far below, mingled with Cassie’s sobs.

“Don’t cry, Your Majesty. I can’t put my arms ’round you, ’eh? Mustn’t dare. But Okalani can.”

He spoke in his own tongue. Cassie’s shade vanished, then reappeared. Okalani’s arms, larger and more muscular than the arms of most men, embraced her; and she gasped and sobbed against Okalani’s soft breasts, breasts that smelled of sweat and the sea.

“I feel the same,” King Kanoa told Cassie when at last she had dried her tears. “Pr’aps I said that. It’s not my house, but I feel it even so. It’s the palace of our high king. Ever so many of us live in there to serve him, and I come ’round whenever I wish. When I do, my quarters are ready and waitin’, and there’s always somebody to welcome me.”

“The taxes...” Cassie gulped. “Not from you, I hope. From the shops and things in Kololahi? It must have taken a lot.”

King Kanoa’s booming laughter echoed from the rocks. “Not a dollar, I assure you, Your Majesty. No bl — No ruddy taxes here. I’m s’prised no one told you. Our king pays us, twig? Better ’rangement all ’round. Hires a good many of us, and slips a shillin’ or two to us lesser kings. To be used for the public good, as ’twere.”

Cassie could only stare.

“Good for us, eh? Steel knives, steel heads for our spears, cloth for the ladies when they’re goin’ to Kololahi and don’t want their bubbies showin’. Hospital for those who need it. Good for him, too. High king. Loved by his people. Got his ambassador at the U.N. All that.”

“I — well, maybe I do see.”

“King Wiliama ’Aukailani. That’s how the U.N. knows him, when it does — what I call him in public, too. Bill in private. No side, eh? William, the Sailor of Heaven. As decent a chap as ever I’ve met.”

“I — please, King Kanoa. Would it be all right if I rode in the chair?”

“What it’s for, eh? The chaps who made it would be hurt if you didn’t. They want to carry you and have been waitin’ ever so. Who carried Her Majesty to the palace? Why, I did. Me an’ three mates. All that, eh?”

The very painted chair had been unshipped from the catamaran. Bamboo poles lashed to its legs on either side (inside those legs, so that the seat rested on them) neatly fitted the broad bronze shoulders of two men before and two behind. These men, each of whom might readily have been a lineman for the Seahawks, carried Cassie and her chair with transparent pride, seemingly without effort. Okalani’s parasol, woven of green palm fronds, waved above her head like a banner; and she felt, felt truly and for the first time, that she was in fact a queen, chosen by fate to judge her people and to stand proudly before their gods as their representative.

“King Kanoa’s Tiny Penniman,” she told herself. “And I’m Mariah Brownlea. I only hope I never meet Vince.” But when at last she was able to tear her eyes from the palace, its beauty and its splendor, she glimpsed another mountain beyond it — a mountain from which rose a plume of smoke, soon whipped away by the wind.

“YOU are not to sit up,” a dark voice told her. “I am here and I will continue to talk until you wake and talk to me, but you are not to sit up. I have a silenced pistol, and I have these glasses so I can see in the dark. There will be a sound like the striking of a kitchen match, and a flash rather smaller than the flash of a cigarette lighter. A flash that will be gone at once. Before it is gone, the bullet will strike you. You may not feel it for a moment or so. Shock does that. Though you may not feel it, it’ll be in your lungs if it’s not in your heart. If you don’t want to be shot, don’t sit up and don’t scream. You’re awake now. How much of this did you hear?”

“I heard you say I wasn’t to sit up,” Cassie said.

“And why? Why are you not to sit up?”

“Because you’ll shoot.”

“Right on. I will. Do I sound like an American?”

Cassie nodded, wondering whether the figure at her bedside could indeed see her.

“Good. I am. I was chosen, in part, for that. I’m a fellow American, and I was chosen in order that you might know that we’re everywhere. Suppose I say to you — I wish to confirm that you are truly awake — number one eighty-one East Arbor Boulevard, apartment three-oh-one. What does it mean to you? Anything?”

“It’s my address. I live there.”

“You live there, but you may die here. Or there. To us they are the same. Who was Brian Pickens?”

“Brian Pickens?” She searched her memory. “Why do you want to kill me?”