Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

It was not. The lowest number on A Deck was ten, and the companionway he had used reached no higher. He was sweating by the time he found another companionway (marked CREW ONLY) that led to the deck above. There a neat bronze plaque announced: SIGNAL DECK.

The bridge—so marked by a small brass sign—was a dozen paces to his right and up a short stair; voices murmured in Spanish behind its closed door. Nearer was a door bearing a single digit: 1. It was, of course, locked.

Another door, this at the aft end of the corridor, was not. Skip opened it and stepped out into the night. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw that the signal deck was surrounded on three sides by weather decking, the roof of the A Deck staterooms. There were chairs there and a few tables, round tables whose pale white tops were trumped by a full moon. With his empty submachine gun slung across his back, he might pass for a hijacker here.

As he had expected, a sliding glass door not quite below the port bridge wing promised entry into Stateroom One. As he had also expected, it was locked—or latched, at least. Though it was difficult to judge by moonlight, it did not appear that the security bar was in place. He had defended burglars; but real burglars (he reminded himself wearily) carried burglar tools. He had keys and a few coins, his penknife, and the gun.

The latch was guarded on the outside by a polished metal molding, probably brass. To the best of his memory, the veranda door of 23C had been latched with a simple hook, raised and lowered by a handle on the inside. He tugged at the molding, without result.

He could smash the glass with the submachine gun’s steel butt-plate, presumably; but the noise would surely alert the men on the bridge. Glass could be broken with a minimum of noise by taping it first. Unfortunately, he had no tape.

He dropped into one of the chairs. If only he had a tool—a claw hammer, for example—he could probably bend back the metal molding. That done, a screwdriver or almost any other tool might have served to lift the latch. Would he have to go below again to look (God alone knew where) for tools?

Half a minute’s thought suggested that it might be possible to bend back the molding with the butt-plate, if he could get it off. Informed by moonlight, his fingertips told him it was fastened by two large screws, and that the screws had wide slots; a coin might serve as a screwdriver.

He was trying it when his coin discovered a narrow depression in the butt-plate, a depression long enough for him to get the nails of three fingers into it. A firm pull flipped up a lid, and turning the gun muzzle-up dropped objects into his lap. The first was round, presumably a vial of oil; the second proved to be a slotted metal tip trailing a strong cord. The third was a multi-tool that included a coarse screwdriver blade about eight centimeters long.

It bent the molding easily. Lifting the latch was almost as easy. The glass door slid silently back, and Skip stepped silently in. The stateroom seemed twice the size of the one he had shared with Chelle, although its smaller bed might have been responsible for part of the apparent increase. After drawing the drapes he switched on a desk light.

The paneled walls held two pictures, both of the Rani . The desk a third—a long-faced, bearded, smiling man in uniform; a pretty woman ten years past youth, also smiling; and three smiling children.

Files in the desk, and a keyboard and screen front and center. Pencils, pens, paper clips, and paper. Telephone on a nightstand. Printer in the corner. Uniforms and a dinner jacket in the closet; two pairs of shoes, both black and highly polished, on the closet floor. Starched white shirts, underwear, socks, and pajamas in drawers. A tele in a cabinet, books on the shelves beneath it. Could this be all?

The bathroom door was not quite closed. Skip pushed it open and for a long second saw only the muzzle of a pistol; during that second, its bore seemed the size of a railway tunnel. He raised both hands.

“Volver,” said the bearded man holding the gun. A circular gesture of his left hand illustrated his meaning.

“I’m not a hijacker.” Skip turned around. “I’m a passenger, Captain.”

“A passenger with a submachine gun.”

“An empty submachine gun. Correct.”

“Sit down. Right there on the floor.”

Skip did.

“Name and cabin number? Class?”

“Skip Webster Grison, and yes, my first name really is Skip. Stateroom Twenty-three, C Deck. First class—but you know that. B and C are all first-class. A is—”

“I know what A is. Did you say your gun’s empty?”

Skip nodded.

“You killed hijackers with it?” The captain strode past Skip and turned to face him.

He shrugged. “I tried, Captain, and eight or ten went down. They can’t all have been dead.”

“Where did you get the gun?”

“I took it from a dead man.”

“A dead hijacker? You killed him?”

“No. Chelle did. I just took his gun.”

“Chelle is a friend of yours, I take it.”

“She’s my contracta, Captain. Why don’t I just explain? It will go faster.”

“Go ahead. Let’s hear it.”

“Chelle knew somebody had tried to kill her mother. Her mother’s your social director.”

“You mean Virginia?”

“Correct. Chelle’s an expert shot and wanted a gun so she could protect her. We went ashore and got one, but we had to go to the other side of the island. By the time we returned you’d put out.”

“I didn’t. The hijackers did. I thought they might run her aground, but they were lucky. Go on.”

“I hired a fishing boat to take us out to the Rani . It took most of the day to catch up, but we did. When—”

“By ‘we’ you mean this woman Chelle and yourself?”

“Yes, plus Chelle’s mother and a beggar who had been interpreting for us. We took him on the boat because we couldn’t talk to the men who sailed it without him.”

“I understand.”

“The hijackers took me on board first, then him, then Virginia, and then Chelle. Chelle had her gun by then, and she knows how to use guns. She killed the man who had this gun, and I grabbed it.”

“And shot some more?”

“Yes. So did Chelle. Three or four others, I’d say. After that she ran. I didn’t realize at first that she was running after her mother, but now I think she was. Chelle can run like a deer, and I couldn’t keep up. I managed to get close enough to ask where we were going, and she said Stateroom One and pointed up.”

The captain nodded. “Go on.”

“She got ahead of me again, and I heard shots. All this was on the Main Deck—perhaps I should say that. There was a transverse corridor, and Chelle had turned off it toward the middle of the ship.”

“She was heading for the elevators, I imagine.”

“I suppose. All I know is that when I went around the corner myself, I didn’t see either of them, just three hijackers with guns. I shot them, and I was still pulling the trigger when my gun stopped firing.”

“You didn’t know why those women were coming here?”

“No. The men I shot seemed to be dead or dying. All of them had guns, and if I’d any sense I’d have picked them up. I stared at the men instead. Then the elevator doors opened, and I ran. Do you want to hear the rest?”

The captain nodded.

“I found a card room with an unlocked door and ducked inside. After ten minutes I felt trapped in there, so I went out on deck, climbed on top of a little table, grabbed the rail of the veranda above, and pulled myself up to C Deck. For a while I tried to get to our cabin, but there wasn’t anything in there I wanted. Not really.”

“Go on, Mr. Grison.”