Gene Wolfe - An Evil Guest

“Yes. She has come back to us, broken and ill.”

“Do you know what she found out?”

“That I do not.” Dr. Schoonveld shook his head. “I do not ask. It is not my affair. I am to make her well — if I can. My nurse told her you had come. She would wish to speak with you, I said I would bring you if I could. I cannot make you go.”

“I’ll go, of course. What can you tell me about her?”

“Only this little. For me, her name is Jane Doe. It is the name I have been told to use. She is young, only not a child. She was instructed — His Majesty has told me this. In California she was to enter into the Storm King’s circle. Have you been there?”

Nodding, Cassie opened her lipstick.

“Then you know. It is a place of strange beliefs. Spiritualists, Buddhists, pagans to prance naked beneath the full moon.” Briefly Dr. Schoonveld smiled.

“These do little harm, I think, but there are worse. There was a circle of fools to pay homage to the Storm King, but quite small. Also Satanists, and their groups became one. This was larger and grew quickly.”

“Sounds bad,” Cassie said.

“His Majesty wished to know who was there and what was planned. He found Jane Doe, who would see for him. One of our guards discovered her on the beach. He telephoned, and she was carried here. This is all I know.”

“She’s not talking?” Cassie inspected her lipstick in her little mirror.

“To me, no. To Izanami, more. To His Majesty, yes. To you more still, I think.”

“How do I look?”

“Beautiful. No man could resist you.”

“Thanks.” Cassie smiled. “Lipstick on my teeth?”

“No. None.”

“If she talks to me, I may not be able to tell you everything she told me.”

“This I understand, Your Majesty.”

Cassie rose. “But if she tells me anything that seems like it would help you treat her, you’ll get it.”

FOR a moment, the room seemed very different from the small, stark one in which the assassin lay; flowers will do that. Orchids and hibiscus, Cassie decided after studying the big bouquets. Orange blossoms, or something very like orange blossoms. Passion flowers? She tried to remember how passion flowers were supposed to look. Bougainvillea.

The woman in the bed lay upon her side, her face turned away from the door. A tall woman, Cassie thought, though the rangy body was hidden by a sheet and the long legs drawn up.

“Hello?” Cassie spoke softly. “I don’t want to disturb you, and if you’d rather not talk to me I’ll go. But the doctor said you wanted to see me.”

She sensed that the tall woman was awake, though there was no sound and no movement.

“I’m Cassie.”

Still nothing.

“I — I’m afraid I’m the queen here. Queen Cassiopeia, if you want to be formal.”

The tall woman rolled over. The eyes in her wasted face appeared large; their stare was hypnotic.

“I don’t know what happened to you, except that it was very bad. Whatever it was, I’m sure my husband didn’t intend for you to be so — so hurt.”

Slowly, the tall woman was sitting up. Long, bare legs slipped over the edge of the bed. The sheet was thrown back to reveal the usual inadequate hospital gown. White, in this case, with bloodless pink stripes.

“If you need some favor... Well, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do what I can.”

The tall woman stood, swaying, hands outstretched. Cassie took them, knowing somehow that it was what was asked.

And woke.

It had been only a dream, all of it. Her girlhood in San José, college, her work in the agency, the midnight meetings in strange places, and the strange visitors who sometimes appeared at those meetings.

There was only...

This.

This warm water, these bubbles spiraling slowly toward the surface with each breath she drew.

Less breath each time. Breaths more and more widely spaced. What was the value of breathing? Once she had known. Now she groped for the answer. Of what use was breath?

The world changed, silently, subtly, reversing as old-fashioned negatives are reversed. Light was darkness, and darkness light. Night lay below her, making dim her bright being with its starless self that was all shadow, the land of the murk-marred soul.

Above her the city shone, a city on the sun, its proud towers streaming with coruscant banners of holy vegetation that fluttered and snapped in crystal currents.

She removed her mask and the clumsy tank that held the air she did not need. They neither floated toward the city nor sunk toward the surface, but remained motionless where she had been. She herself made haste to meet those who made haste to meet her, angels too high and holy to serve any other god. They swarmed around her, larger — yet far smaller than she, kissing thighs and buttocks, sucking her ears and licking organs she had not known she possessed. Might she someday be as they?

Yes. He could do it. Would do it...

He was the city, and the city he, his supple arms wrapping this world, warm and knowing, subtly favoring those who served him.

As she had served him to betray him.

I have come to see him and speak with him . She spoke to herself and thus to those who swarmed about her, swarmed like buzzing blue-backed flies, like minnows, like graceful gray slugs come to devour the dead, like lions circling an elephant whose blood soaks the soil on which he stands, an elephant whose strength is of the past, kept standing by pride, by the inborn knowing. It was — it is — the true king. It is royal and will remain royal even as carrion.

“Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”

I have come that I may behold his face, and he mine .

Their reply came on the rush of the current. You may not enter, much as we love and hate you .

I must, or die .

Their laugher blew her upward, toward the city they denied her. Already you are dead .

She held her hands before her eyes. They were whiter than any chalk, hands molded of snow traced with blue — and that myriad who had swarmed her was no more. So soon as she no longer saw them, they were no more. She lowered her hands and swam, and they were back. She willed not to see them, willed as the man with the living beard, the six-fingered man, had taught her, had taught them all. Willed away, they were gone.

I am dead, bringing my bones to lay upon the heavens in tribute to him . This she spoke to herself, and thus to the keeper at the gate.

And you are... ?

Shalimar of the circle am I, Pat Gomez of Presidio Security, Patty Darling, Sweetheart, and Baby. All these .

The keeper of the gate remained erect; the gate bowed low. Enter!

The city was the god, the god the city. She entered into it as a man enters into a woman, triumphant in defeat.

They lay on white slabs all about her, his living dead. She wandered among them, changed by each, stronger in body and mind and less trusting of her strength, the storehouse of strange skills of language, murder, art, and love. She gloried in her strength and longed for the day when he would send her forth to rend his foe.

Long and long she waited; then the torture began. There remained in her, somewhere and somehow, the seed of humanity. A spore unseen but real; a thing that valued life in all its wild fantasies, standing awed before the slime mold and the butterfly. To root out that spore he broke her, scattering the bits from pole to pole.

Reassembling them in strange ways, scraped, washed, and cleaned. Broke her again, sifted the rubbish that remained for burning.

Until at last it came to her that if it continued she would come to hate him whom she had loved so briefly. And afterward that such hatred was proper, was right, was what he sought. Armed with the knowing, she rebelled. She would not hate him, though she wiped him from the world.