Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

Vanessa murmured, “Polly’s dead. So is Amelia. I know they are.”

Skip wanted to say that one or the other might have survived; but he knew it would sound as false as he felt it to be, and kept silent.

“I killed them.” Vanessa stepped in front of him and clutched his shirt. “I killed them when I volunteered, but I didn’t mean to.”

He said, “I doubt that the hijackers did this,” and managed to get her to the stairs. The stairwell, closed off as it was by massive watertight doors, had purer air, and G Deck, when they reached it, better air still. The door to the conference room was not locked; Skip and Susan opened the portholes, welcoming a warm breeze from the sea.

“You want to have a conference?” Johnson was not sweating, Skip noticed, despite the climb and his tweed jacket. “Are you sure you want to include me?”

Skip nodded and flipped open his mobile phone. “Give me the second-class bar, please. I don’t know the number.” After a second or two, he said, “Thank you.”

Susan asked, “Collecting more people, Mr. Grison?”

“Trying to. Yes.”

“I might be able to help.”

“I know, and I may have to call on you.” Skip dropped into the nearest chair and spoke into his phone. “My name is Skip Grison. Could I have yours?”

Susan gave Vanessa a package of facial tissues.

“There are soldiers on this ship, Marlon. Men on leave or recently discharged. I’m sure you know them.”

Skip listened intently.

“Correct. I’m trying to find Corporal Donald Miles. Do you know him?”

Johnson said, “He was in that first group they talk about.”

Skip nodded, and spoke into the mobile phone. “If you see him within the next hour or so, please ask him to come to Compartment Twelve on G Deck. Tell him I’m anxious to speak with him.” He snapped his phone shut.

Susan said, “I could get coffee. Probably some sweet rolls or something. Would you like me to do it?”

Mick Tooley came in, tired and worried. “There’s been an explosion on I Deck. Do you know about that?”

Skip nodded. “We were there. Sit down, please.”

The chairs were large and black, and reluctant when it came to moving across the soft Lincoln-green carpet.

“You already know Chelle’s mother. I may not have told you that she’s the ship’s social director.”

“No one did,” Tooley said. “I had assumed she was a passenger.”

“This is pro forma,” Skip said. “Susan, did you know that this lady, on this ship her name is Virginia Healy, is the ship’s social director?”

“No, sir. I didn’t know who Virginia Healy was, sir. Just that the bomb—can we stop calling it the explosion?”

Skip nodded. “You’re right, it was almost certainly a bomb.”

“Just that the bomb killed two of her friends, or she thinks it did.”

Skip turned to Rick Johnson. “What about you? Did someone tell you that Virginia was our social director?”

“No. No one told me .”

“But you heard someone tell someone else. Please tell us everything you can. It’s important.”

“I can see that, but I don’t have a lot of information to give you. It was in that meeting when you and Mick here, and Soriano, were recruiting people to go down into the hold with you.”

Skip nodded. “Go on.”

“She volunteered, and somebody behind me whispered, ‘Who’s that?’ Somebody else whispered, ‘She’s the social director.’ ”

Tooley said, “Did you recognize their voices? Either one of them?”

Johnson shook his head.

“You don’t know who they were?”

“I have no idea. I—to tell you the truth I was trying to decide whether I would volunteer. I raised my hand just after they spoke, I think. I heard the question and the answer, but I paid very little attention to them.”

Skip said, “Yours wasn’t one of the first hands to go up, as I remember.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t. If there had been more hands raised, I wouldn’t have raised mine at all. You had said it was going to be very dangerous, and I felt sure you were right—that it was something just short of a suicide mission. Off Earth…”

Vanessa went to him. “If you know anything, anything at all that might help, please, please tell us! You didn’t know Amelia or Polly. I understand that. But they worked for me, they were nice girls, and they tried to do a good job, both of them. Amelia had been a champion diver, and—and…”

Skip had risen. He put his arm around her.

Johnson cleared his throat. “I didn’t want you to think I was bragging, that’s all. I told you I was in intelligence, and I was. Maybe you thought it meant I had a desk job, and if that’s what you thought I wanted to leave it right there.”

“I did,” Skip said. “I take it I was wrong.”

“I went into some very tight places, Mr. Grison. I did it because it was my duty. It didn’t seem to me that it was my duty to volunteer, and I had to think things over. I did, and went into another tight place, this time with you, and I’d like to know what’s going on.”

“So would I.” Skip cleared his throat. “I need to fill in some details. Virginia will already know much of what I’m going to say—perhaps all of it. I apologize for boring her, and for boring Mick, at least a little bit. But everyone here needs to understand where we stand in this.”

He paused, and Susan said, “Go on, sir.”

“Virginia is Chelle’s mother, as I said a moment ago. That’s why—”

Vanessa said, “A bad mother. You know my name and I know you went down into that dreadful warehouse place with me, but I don’t remember yours. Will you forgive me? I’ve had a terrible shock. I lost … l-lost—”

Skip intervened. “This is Susan Clerkin, Virginia. She’s my confidential secretary, and she joined Mick Tooley here after Mick set out to rescue us. We’re indebted to her, and to Rick, too.”

Johnson said, “I probably know less than anybody about what’s been happening on this ship. I know Susan pretty well and know the ship was hijacked, but that’s as far as I go.”

“Virginia’s had some memories wiped,” Skip told him. “You were in Military Intelligence, so you probably know more about that than anyone here.”

Johnson shrugged. “We don’t like to do it and don’t do it unless we have to. If you’re asking whether I’ve done it myself—”

“I’m not.”

“The answer is that I was never authorized. Medical personnel only. If you’re asking whether I myself have been wiped, the answer is no. There are no blanks in my memory.”

Susan said, “How is it done?”

“You should ask a doctor, not me. Roughly, then. You can record a person’s memories and personality by picking up minute electronic impulses in the brain and recording them. You stimulate all the parts of the brain until you have everything in digital form. When you’ve got it, you wipe the forebrain by countering its impulses. After that you edit the record you made, generally by searching out words and images. Maybe you look for Operation Grief , for example, then for mental images of an armed drone. When you find things you want forgotten, you delete.”

Susan said, “And then you upload the data back into the brain?”

“Exactly.” Johnson paused, looking troubled. “It’s not perfect, you understand, and it’s highly dependent on the skill of the operator. Sometimes this bit or that bit escapes, so to speak.”

Skip said, “I didn’t know that.”

Johnson shrugged. “Most people don’t, but it happens. I know you’re an attorney. Susan and I talked a lot on the boat, and she told me quite a bit about you. Let’s say we’ve got you and we want to wipe everything related to a conference you had three years ago with a Ms. Smith. We know more or less what Ms. Smith must have told you, and what you must have told her. We search for that stuff in your record and delete it. We look for mental images of her and delete those, too.”