Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

I have not. No, not yet. Or if I have, I will strain every faculty to win her back. What would be the point of boasting my advantages—the contract we signed, my wealth and position, her college memories, and the rest? All of them together will weigh less with her than my lined face and receding hairline.

There is another: Vanessa.

And one more: Chelle’s own good sense. She rejected my logic, but rejected it in a storm of emotion. Whatever else Chelle may be, she is no fool. Storms are powerful, but storms (like men) do not endure.

Vanessa … What age is she? Biologically between thirty-five and forty, I would say. The woman into whom Vanessa’s every thought was uploaded was thirty-five at youngest, forty at oldest. Or so I (a poor judge) would imagine; but how old was Vanessa? How old at death, how old when she had her last scan?

Scans can be loaded into a mainframe. How are they loaded into the brain? If her case goes to trial, I’ll need to know that.

If she died in a hospital, she may well have been scanned just before death. Those things will be a matter of record. Boris can find them out for me.

Vanessa wants me, and who can blame her? She needs a hold to counter the hold I have on her. She will not get that one.

How old? She was alive when Chelle was twenty-three; I know, because I saw her then. Such a woman would not have married before twenty, or so I think.

I wish Susan were here. She is always a better judge of women. I could send for her, perhaps.

No. Not if I judge Chelle correctly. Susan must stay where she is.

Say that Vanessa was twenty-three when she contracted with Charles C. Blue. Forty-six when I saw her? Perhaps. If she had lived, she would be what? Sixty-six, sixty-eight, seventy. Charles was older, certainly, and is most probably dead. If not, seventy-five at least. Can I make use of a wealthy and ruthless man of that age?

Very possibly; and if he makes use of me, he will be billed. Zygmunt could find him, certainly. Houses, cars, and all the rest.

A new woman? That, too, is possible.

These men on the ladder lifts, how hard they work and how desperate they must be to take such work and cling to it. How long can an athletic man do such work? I wish I had binoculars.

A seat alone would have suited his mood better, but the only unoccupied seat that offered a good view of the sails was next to a lean old man whose beard and long white hair danced in the wind; Skip took it.

The sails interested him—the complexity of their rigging, and their sheer size, great sheets of some white synthetic that seemed to fill the sky. The sailors who worked them were brawny men, many of them big, yet when they lay aloft to take in sail (as they did when he had been on deck for an hour or so) they seemed hardly larger than ants. The seven fiberglass masts were taller than many office towers.

“We’ve a blow coming,” the old man next to Skip said; he indicated the sails with a wave of his blackthorn stick. “That’s why they’re doing that.”

Skip nodded absently, wondering where he had seen the old man before.

“Your first cruise?”

“No. My third.”

“My ex and I used to try to take a cruise every year.” The white-bearded man had begun packing tobacco into the bowl of a corncob pipe. “Some years we’d make it and some years we didn’t. I don’t mean just this cruise, there’s a hundred plus. You can never run out.”

“I see.”

“If you want to learn more about working the ship, there’s a class. Call the social director. She’ll sign you up.”

“Perhaps I will.”

“Quite a few go on these because they’re getting set to die.” The old man paused to light his pipe, but Skip did not speak.

“It comforts ’em. The sea’s eternal. If Earth were to die, if the Os were to blow up the whole thing, there’d still be seas like this on other worlds. I think about it sometimes.” As he spoke the old man watched Skip, bright blue eyes just visible above his dark sunglasses.

“They won’t,” Skip said. “We’re fighting for control of habitable planets, and habitable planets are rare. The Os want them, and so do we.”

The old man’s mouth smiled, but there was no smile in his eyes. “Suppose they could get control of all the rest by blowing up this one?”

Skip shrugged, leaned back, and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the old man had gone. Skip had not heard him leave.

He thought—as he had so often thought through all the lonely years—of Chelle fighting on whatever godforsaken world they had sent her to. “One of the best noncoms we had turned out to be an EU spy. I killed him.” She had said that not long ago. “If you love Earth you leave it.” She had said that just before she left, and he felt he understood it a bit better now. The Os would never destroy a habitable world; there would be a negotiated settlement (however unfavorable) long before it came to that. But if millions of people believed they might …

No doubt the government encouraged it; there would be more soldiers, more Marines.

He used his mobile phone to call the office of the ship’s social director. “I understand there are lectures on the operation of the ship. I’d like to attend one.”

“Certainly.” The speaker looked young and bright, and sounded the same way. “We’ll be starting tomorrow at ten. One hour, so you’ll have ample time for lunch. What’s your name, sir?”

He gave it.

There was a lengthy silence. Then, “There seems to be a bit of trouble about your record, Mr. Grison. Could you come to our office? We’re on I Deck, in Compartment Three Thirty-eight.”

“Could you—” But she had hung up.

The elevators were long-lift only, as they were in most buildings ashore. Fortunately, Main Deck to I Deck qualified, and the long walk through stifling corridors to Compartment 338 gave him ample time to wonder about the problem with his records—why it had not been discovered earlier, for example.

“The social director would like to speak to you in person, Mr. Grison.” The girl behind the desk was indeed young and looked bright; she gestured toward the door on her left. “She’ll see you right away.”

Vanessa smiled pertly as he came in. “You don’t look surprised, Mr. Grison. Are you?”

“Not very, Ms. Healy. Surprised to see that I was right, if you like. Can we talk here?”

“We could, but—come with me.”

She led him down a passageway, around a corner to a companionway, and up to G Deck. Down more passageways to a room she unlocked; it was dark save for the watery light admitted by portholes that were scarcely higher than the tossing waves of the Atlantic.

“We’re going to use this for lectures and classes.” She shut and bolted the door. “To be honest, I don’t think my office is bugged either. This is more exciting, though. Don’t you agree?”

Skip said, “We’re less liable to be interrupted, at least.”

“And I get to sit with you in the dark. If I were to switch on the lights, it would be recorded and I’d have to make up a story. It’s the energy thingy.”

“I understand.”

“They work the sailors like slaves. Maybe you’ve seen it?”

“Certainly I saw them working hard at times.”

“I keep thinking, give them electric what-you-call-ums to wind up their ropes, and send some of them into space to fight, the way they sent Chelle. You agree, don’t you?”

Skip shrugged. “It costs a great deal to train and equip a soldier, and much more to get one to a contested world. Few of those men would repay the expense—or so I’d guess. Is this coincidence? Your being on our ship?”