Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

“Nor will I. Did you tell her that?”

“No, sir.”

The sun had gone; high in the west, Skip saw the first star. “I doubt that she will want to come back, but if she does give her back her old job. No loss of seniority. Say she’s been on unpaid leave.”

“Got it, sir.”

“This ship’s been taken, Mick. Hijacked.”

Tooley’s whistle was audible.

“They spoke of ransom.” Skip wanted to sigh, but did not. “Chelle killed the man who spoke of it, and that was my fault. I wasn’t thinking clearly, just worrying about what they would do to her.” He paused, wanting to pace up and down.

“I’d say you had every right to worry.”

“Yes, I suppose. If I had it to do over … Well, maybe I’d do the same thing. At any rate he’s dead now.”

“They’re holding you, sir?”

“No. I’m hiding. I have good reason to believe they’ll kill me if they find me. And—”

Tooley interrupted. “What did you do?”

“That doesn’t matter. The thing is that I don’t want you to notify the Coast Guard.”

“I had just decided to do that as soon as we hung up.”

“Don’t. It seems certain that the captain or one of the other officers got a message out, to say nothing of the passengers. We may have hijackers—hell, we do—but this isn’t the seventeenth century. So they probably know already. Unless there’s someone a lot more important than I am on board…”

“I’ve got it. What if I could organize a private rescue?”

“Then do it. I’m not certain the Coast Guard would rescue us, to tell you the truth. I’ve been involved with a couple of hijacking cases—”

“I know, sir. The City of Port Arthur. International Law of the Sea Tribunal. All that nonsense.”

“In one of those cases, the ship sunk. The hijackers scuttled it—or that’s the official line. Do hijackers take ships in order to sink them?”

“I wouldn’t if I were a hijacker.”

“Nor would I. Do you think you can really organize a rescue?”

“Yes, sir. It’ll take money, but I believe it might be done.”

“See Ibarra. You’ll have to sell him on it. You don’t have to sell me. I just hope you can pull it off.”

“You can count on me.” Tooley cleared his throat. “I’ve told you what I called to tell you, sir. All right if I ask a question?”

“Of course. What is it?”

“What are you going to do now? You said you were hiding.”

“I’m going to try to get into Stateroom One. That was what we tried to do when we got loose—get to Stateroom One. There were hijackers, and I don’t know whether they got Chelle and her mother. I heard gunfire, and when I got there I fired and ran. A cabin door was open and I ducked inside.”

“And hid?”

“No. I’d seen a young man—this was yesterday—who jumped from veranda to veranda. I didn’t actually see him do it, but it was what he must have done. He was about your age, I’d say. I’m quite a bit older than he was, but I did the best I could, balancing on the railing with a hand on a partition and grabbing a railing post of the veranda above and so on. Scrambling up. Those partitions are between the verandas horizontally, but you can swing around them if you try. I stopped here when I was too tired to go farther.”

“I hope you’re rested now, sir. What’s in Stateroom One?”

“I don’t know,” Skip said.

The moon is high—clearly I slept. They’ll sleep, too. Most of them and perhaps all of them. What have they done with the passengers? There’s no one behind these glass doors, no one in the bedroom behind this veranda. Luggage, yes, and a rumpled bed; but no people. We would have seen bodies in the water, surely. Not a great many perhaps, in proportion to the passengers and crew; but ten or twenty, certainly. We saw none, except for poor Al Alamar. He returned to the ship, found the hijackers in control, and tried to fight them. He was a soldier, and a brave one.

Did the other soldiers fight? Some of them at least? There were a good many on the ship, apparently, most of them in second class. There were enough for Vanessa to hold a meet-greet-and-hook-up party for them.

Chelle went, and I ought to have gone with her. She was angry, but would she have made a scene if I had come in later? Very possibly she would, if she were drunk by then. Certainly she was drunk later—or so I’d like to believe. Was our seventh person drunk too? Was Jane Sims drunk? Did she think Jim or Jerry might be Don? Was Don a soldier? I’d like to think that he was, and that she did.

If the soldiers fought, Jim and Jerry may be dead, for which I now owe them even more. As much as I owe poor Al Alamar.

I’m no soldier nor am I brave, only a killer with an empty gun. Vanessa thought I was brave because I fought that military cop. That wasn’t courage, only rage. Rage because he had struck me, and frustration because Chelle hadn’t recognized me. We killers, we murderers, how often we do it because we’re angry or frustrated or both. That man who kicked a little child to death. His girlfriend’s child, and perhaps he was its father. He or some other man she had met in the same bar or another bar.…

Chelle may be pregnant; but if she is, the infant she carries will not be mine. Will I ever have a child?

Have a son? Will I, someday, kick him to death?

How many murder cases have I defended? Eight I can think of offhand. Even a murderer deserves to have someone to speak for him, someone who will explain to the jury why he did what he did and show him where his best interests lie. I did what I could for them, even for the woman who killed her own children.

I’ll do my best to defend Vanessa, if I ever get the chance. Who will defend the man who tried to kill her? And will he do his best for him, his best for the faceless man, tall and well dressed, with the steak knife?

Who’ll do his best for me? Men with machetes dashing down the corridor, into the fire of my submachine gun … Into the fire of this gun I hold, dashing to their deaths.

When I’m killed tonight, it will be one more. We all have to die, and I’ve had my dream. Chelle returned to me, still as young and fresh as she had been twenty years ago. That was what I wanted. I got it, and the rest has been anticlimax.

Would I live for her if I could? No. My living will do her no good and may do her a great deal of harm, but I will live for myself if I can.

What’s in Stateroom One? And how did Vanessa learn that it was there?

Did they reach it? She and Chelle? Is Chelle still alive? I must find out if I can, must help her if I can. Would she do the same for me? Certainly, and without a moment’s thought.

These glass doors are locked. I might climb up or down, but it will be easier to try another veranda forward. As tired as I am—tired, stiff, thirsty, and hungry—that will be the best course. There ought to be a refrigerator inside a first-class stateroom, mixers and snacks. If I put my left arm and my head through this strap or whatever they call it, I can carry the submachine gun slantwise across my back.

And now up on the railing and step across—carefully, carefully—and the veranda door here is already open.

How easy it was!

Whether the hijackers would keep the ship’s wind-powered generators in operation had been the question; clearly the answer was yes. The corridors were still well lit, and the elevators still ran, though none would carry a man from B Deck to A Deck. Skip thought it likely that Stateroom One would be on A Deck, and looked.