Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

Skip nodded.

“Swell, but suppose that while she was with you, she asked to use your private restroom. You said yes, and thought over what she’d been saying while she was gone. When you thought about it, you felt certain emotions. Okay, after you were uploaded and released as wiped, you might have a memory you couldn’t quite place, a memory of sitting alone in your office and feeling certain emotions while hearing a toilet flush.”

Tooley asked, “Are you saying that something like that could be dangerous? A serious failure?”

Johnson nodded. “Suppose there were things on your desk then, a picture of an old man and a clock showing date and time.”

Tooley nodded. “I’ve got it.”

“When I signed with you, I told you about the patrols—that we were sent out to take prisoners.”

“Right.”

“I made arrests, too, and questioned the people I’d arrested. That was the main thing I did, keep tabs on suspects, sweat them after they’d been arrested, and report what I’d learned. Let’s leave the Os out of this. They don’t think the way we do, and they don’t do any wiping. Greater Eastasia does a lot of it. They send in spies who’ve forgotten they’re spies, people who do certain things when the time comes without knowing why they do them. We looked for indications of that. Once you suspect somebody, you can download his mind and run searches. Swell, but the equipment’s costly and delicate—we had two setups and one was usually out of service—and the whole thing can take a day or longer. So guys like me look for subjects whose minds might be worth searching, and try to find out enough to give the people who would do it some direction.”

“We need to do some searching ourselves now,” Skip said. He took out his pistol and laid it on a small table at the front of the room. “I think everybody here is armed. I know most of you are. Get out your guns, please, put them on this table with mine, and go back to your chairs. I ask it as a gesture of good faith.”

Johnson said, “What if we won’t comply?”

“Then you’ll be asked to leave.”

Johnson nodded, took out a pistol that looked very much like Chelle’s, and laid it on the table beside Skip’s.

Skip said, “Susan?”

She nodded, rose, and laid her snub revolver there; her hand shook a little. Susan’s revolver was followed by Mick Tooley’s big, dark green semiautomatic.

Vanessa was pushing up her sleeve. Skip said, “Do me a favor, Virginia. Just take off that wrist holster and put the whole affair on the table.”

Vanessa did.

“Most of you will have observed Virginia’s arm. It’s badly scarred, and the scars are fresh.”

Vanessa had pulled her sleeve back down. “I try to keep them covered up. I mean, at dinner people wouldn’t … You understand, I’m sure.”

“I do.” Skip smiled, making it reassuring. “How did you get them?”

“I have no idea.”

He nodded.

Johnson said, “You didn’t do that business with our guns just so we could see this poor lady’s arm.”

“No. I wanted to watch your faces as you handled your guns. Someone tried to kill Virginia before she boarded. Mick knows about it. A man with a steak knife came up behind her and stabbed her in the back.”

Johnson gave a low whistle.

“I have reason to believe—reasons I won’t go into now—that she had seen her attacker from behind. She saw him only briefly as he sat eating in a restaurant.”

“Eating steak,” Johnson said.

“She didn’t see what he was eating, but you’re probably right. Whatever it was, a third person saw her and told her attacker. He got up—I don’t know this, but it seems very probable—and followed her, having filched the steak knife from the restaurant. He may have hidden it in a newspaper. Some of the witnesses to the stabbing say her attacker had one.”

“Do you have a good description?”

“No,” Skip said. “Mick?”

Tooley shrugged. “Everything, sir?”

“Yes. What you told me, and anything else you may not have said. Empty the bag.”

“Okay. Two described him as tall and thin. One said he was average height. Two said white and one Latino. Good clothes—they all agreed on that. One thought he was carrying a newspaper, one thought it was an attaché case, and one didn’t notice that he was carrying anything.”

Johnson said, “Go on.”

“That’s it, except for the knife. The police have it, but a man who works for us got to see it. It was a steak knife, he said, just as Mr. Grison told you. Slightly curved blade, serrated edge, sharp point. A black handle of some kind of synthetic.” Tooley turned to Skip. “I had our friend check restaurants within walking distance of the attack. He found two that used knives like the one the cops showed him. Do you want them?”

Skip shook his head. “After she was stabbed, Virginia was taken to a hospital. She left it in the morning, went to her apartment, packed in a hurry, and fled. She was afraid, obviously, that the man who had stabbed her would track her down and try again.”

Tooley and Johnson nodded.

“I went to her apartment soon after she left, as I told Mick earlier. I found an object on the floor there, an object that’s in my pocket now. I don’t want to take it out and hold it up because it terrified Virginia when I showed it to her earlier. I’ll pass it to anyone who wants to see it, asking that you hold it so that she can’t see it.”

Susan moved her chair nearer Vanessa’s. “Is that all right? What he said? Do you mind if he does it?”

“I don’t.” Vanessa took a deep breath, and let it out in an audible sigh. “I don’t have to see it. He showed it to me, and I know what it is. I’ll shut my eyes.”

Meanwhile, Johnson had put out his hand; Skip put the brown object into it.

“Sharp!” Johnson had opened the blade.

“It is,” Skip said.

Johnson closed it and passed it to Tooley, who offered it to Susan. When she shook her head, he returned it to Skip.

“I’d known Virginia before her daughter and I boarded this ship. She’d worn long sleeves then, but so what? It was cold, so everybody wore long sleeves. It’s warm here, and nobody wore them except Virginia.”

Johnson said, “Her gun. She had to hide it.”

“I was with her when she got it, and she wore long sleeves before that. That may have been why the woman who sold it to her suggested it. Perhaps I should have seen those scars then, but the room was dark—just a couple of candles. Later I saw them in one of our meetings, when she put her gun away: long scars on her left forearm.”

Skip waited for questions, but there were none. “Earlier I had showed her the brown object, the knife or shaver or whatever you call it, that I just showed Rick. She screamed when she saw it, but she couldn’t explain why it frightened her so much.”

Johnson said, “It had made the scars?”

“No. It couldn’t have. They’re recent but not as recent as that. I know when and where she got it, and it wasn’t long before she came aboard. I think those scars were made by something similar, a folding knife with a brown handle or another old shaver. When she saw this one in a shop, it woke some memory. She wanted to buy it, but she had been a good customer and the shopkeeper gave it to her. She left it behind when she fled the apartment I had given her. Seeing it unexpectedly in my hand, she was terrified.”

Skip paused, looking from face to face. “The way she got her scars is pretty obvious, I’d say. Not more than a year ago she tried to kill herself, holding the knife in her right hand—she’s clearly right-handed—and cutting her left wrist and forearm.”

Tooley said, “She failed.”