Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

“Have you ever been there?”

He shook his head.

“Then how do you know?”

“I checked things out before I booked, that’s all. The information on their site covered all three classes. What the rooms looked like, where they were on the ship, what the food was like, and so on. What deck were you on when you met your mother?”

“This one. The spa’s on this deck, too. Why are you looking like that?”

“Because tourist-class passengers—and second-class passengers—aren’t permitted on this deck. Now eat your sandwich.”

Obediently, Chelle did. “Maybe they’re not, but if they have guards to keep them out, I never saw any. We could call her up and ask her. How could we get hold of her?”

“Wait. We need to talk, so let’s finish lunch.”

“I didn’t hate her. I met her and I was surprised to see her. Flubbergassed. And I hugged her, and she hugged me. I’m bigger and stronger than she is now.…”

Skip nodded.

“That didn’t seem right, but she didn’t seem to mind. You paid the rent on her apartment? Isn’t that what you said?”

“I took care of it, yes.”

“But you didn’t buy her a ticket on this boat?”

“Ship. No, I didn’t.”

“Have you gone up to watch them work the sails?”

“No.” Skip turned on the fan. “If you’ll stop asking me questions, I’ll tell you what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last five minutes.”

“What is it?”

He sighed. “Someone’s after her. Let me back up and explain. Mick Tooley’s a bright young guy in our firm. I told him about your mother and gave him her number. I told her about Mick, too, and gave her his number. She was to contact him if she needed anything.”

“But if someone is after her…?”

“This was before I knew that.” Skip sighed again. “Here I’m guessing, but I don’t believe she knew anybody was after her then either.”

“I see. Go on.”

“I went there the day before we left. It had been broken into and searched fairly thoroughly. She wasn’t there.”

Chelle’s eyes were wide. “You must have thought they’d gotten her.”

“No. It seemed clear they hadn’t. For one thing, her overnight bag was gone. Her clothes were missing, too—all her personal possessions. For another, the break-in had to be quite recent. If it hadn’t been some of the other tenants would’ve reported it—you could hardly walk past the apartment without noticing that the door was broken, and it was near the elevator. I talked to the doormen, and they hadn’t seen her for at least two days.”

“You—you should’ve canceled our trip!” Chelle’s glass slammed the table. “You should have told me. You bastard!”

“Naturally you’re angry. What would you have done if I had?”

“I’d have tried to help her! What the fuck do you think I’d do!”

“Keep your voice down, please.” For a moment Skip was silent, biting his lower lip and feeling terribly, terribly old. “Your mother has your number. If she had needed your help, wouldn’t she have called you?”

“If she could. Only if she could.” Clearly, Chelle was struggling to keep her anger under control.

“You met her just a few minutes ago. You hugged her. Did she ask your help?”

“You smart-ass bastard!”

“As you like.” Skip sipped his drink. “She did not. She had my number, too. She did not call me. She may have called Mick Tooley—as I said, I gave her his number. If she did, which I doubt, he thought it better not to tell me. I’ve found him a young man of sound judgment.”

“You didn’t tell me! You didn’t tell me one damned thing!”

“You’re right, I didn’t. At least not until now, when it seemed to me it might do some good. We may be watched, Chelle. Both of us.”

She stared at him, her face flushed, her mismatched hands trembling.

“She and I traveled to Canam together to meet you. Later I found her an apartment and gave her money for furniture. Anyone who traced her recent movements would certainly have concluded that she was associated with me. You see that, don’t you?”

“I hate to think of Mother being mixed up with a slick bastard lawyer like you.”

“But she is. And with you, a heroic soldier. Anyone who looked into her history would quickly learn that she had one child, a daughter, and that child’s identity. The simplest search would reveal that her daughter was in the Army and had recently returned to Earth.”

Chelle rose, trembling; she had never looked lovelier. “My mother has been risking her life for this planet. You knew that, and you left her high and dry so you could run off to screw me, a woman young enough to be your kid.”

“Chelle! Please listen.”

“I’m through listening. You listen to me. There’s a deadbolt on that door.” She pointed. “If you’re the first one in here tonight, you bolt it to let me know. I’ll find someplace else to sleep. If I’m first in, I’ll bolt it and you can jump in the goddamn ocean for all I care.”

After finishing his drink and sandwich, Skip switched off the fan, carried their tray into the passageway, and left too, going up on the Main Deck to watch the working of the sails.

And think.

I have forgotten the old man’s name; I remember everything else: his tousled gray hair and the old white shirts he always wore, threadbare shirts sometimes patched and darned but always clean, the jeans and the blue rubber-soled shoes from Eastasia.

His shop was always clean, too. I would have expected dust, but the old lamp with the peeling bronze finish was immaculate and every chipped Dresden plate shone. He spent the hours between customers scrubbing and dusting, he told me, and thus fled depression.

Vanessa fled as well, and it is possible (though not, I think, probable) that she too fled inner demons. Could she not have searched her tiny apartment herself, slashing her faded pink cushions with the bone-handled shaver? She would have hated the cramped rooms I gave her and the old furniture. Could she not have avenged herself on both?

Yes, but that is the point, or so it seems to me. When tenants vacate a place they hate, hate because of the money it snatches from their account each hundred-day, perhaps, or because their neighbors make noise or cook cabbage …

When they truly hate the place they are leaving, they vandalize it, smearing obscenities on its walls, stealing its electrical outlets, and so on and so forth—all the rest of that long, sad catalogue; I know it only too well. Nothing of that kind had occurred. The search had been a search, and not vandalism. Vanessa had (they had thought she had) some small item, a paper or something of the sort, a thing that might have been hidden almost anywhere. What it was, I could not guess, and it may have been something that did not in fact exist.

If it did not exist, what was it they thought she had? What made them think she had it? If it did exist, what was it and where did she get it?

Chelle thought her mother had been a spy. She had said so in my hotel room. The walls of such rooms are notoriously thin; she may well have been overheard. Or a surveillance device may have been planted in the room. Or Chelle may have expressed the same thought on some other occasion, most probably a debriefing.

Suppose that Chelle had brought home something she should not have, and that she had given that forbidden object to her mother. Or that someone suspected she had. That, too, was possible. In that case, Chelle herself held the answer to all the riddles—assuming that she knew what it was she had.

Have I lost her? If I have, I am well rid of her. It should be possible to imagine a less suitable mate for a middle-aged attorney, but it might take an hour’s thinking. If I have lost her, I will be miserable—and fortunate in my misery.