Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

Skip sat, and twisted the top from his bottle. “You know Chelle, I know. Do you like her?”

“I’m not trying to move in on you, sir.”

“I didn’t think you were. I just wondered what you thought of her.”

“Everybody likes her, sir.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, sir.” Miles paused. “She’s good-looking, and sharp as hell. She’s got that air of command, too. You know what I mean? She’s a leader. She knows it, and you know it as soon as she shows up. I don’t know how many decorations she’s got, but Private Bonham called around, he said, and he says the eagle and maple leaf, silver. If she stays in, they’ll pin bars on her. You bet your ass, sir.”

“She’s not staying in,” Skip said. “Or I don’t think she is.”

“I don’t blame her, sir.”

“I ought to add that I don’t want her to. She has a problem, a serious one, and I’m trying to help her with it. I’m a great deal older than she is, as I feel certain you realize.”

“A little older, sir. Just a little bit. I guess you two contracted before she went up.”

“Correct. I can’t be a young man for her again. I can help her, though, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Are you contracted?”

“No, sir.” Miles’s face went blank.

“Have you ever been?”

“No, sir. We— Can I explain, sir? You won’t believe me, but it’s the truth.”

“If it’s true, I’ll believe you.”

“There was this girl in high school. We … You know.”

“You fell in love.”

“Yes, sir. That’s it exactly. We said we were going to contract. I believed it, and I think she did, too.”

“Continue, please, Corporal. Let’s have the whole story.” Skip sounded as sympathetic as he ever had to a defense witness during a murder trial, and that was very sympathetic indeed.

“Only she went off to college, sir. We said we’d call and e-mail and all that. You know?”

Skip nodded. “I certainly do.”

“Only I didn’t have the money to call very often, and I’m not very good about writing anything. After a while, well, I enlisted and she stopped calling. It—it didn’t bother me back then. It wasn’t a big thing. This next is the part you won’t believe, sir.”

“Try me,” Skip said.

“She was on the planet, on the world they sent me to. She was an officer, sir.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir. She’d studied physics in college, and gotten really high up. There was a weapon we had there. She couldn’t say what it was, but it was something one of her teachers had come up with. He was old and hadn’t wanted to go, but he told the Army they ought to take Jane. He said they ought to make her an officer and all that so she could take care of his weapon, and they did it. After I’d been at that base about a week, we—well, we saw each other. I can’t tell you how that was, sir. I haven’t got the words.”

“I think I understand.”

“We said we wanted to get together to talk about old times, and that was all it was. Only we knew better, both of us. We’d go to the officers’ club. I was an enlisted man, but nobody said anything. They could see how it was, and they just smiled and went back to their card game or whatever. We said we were going to contract, and we meant it. We were going to do everything right. You could get model contracts on one of the computers she worked on. Then…”

“Something happened,” Skip said.

“She got killed.” Miles cleared his throat. “I was out on the periphery then, sir. There were outposts, and that was where I was when the missile hit. It was just a little one, not one of the big ones like you fire into space, but it … It killed Janie—killed her, and a hell of a lot of other people.”

“One question, please.” Skip paused. “I know this must be painful.”

“Go ahead, sir. It’s not going to get any worse.”

“Was Janie’s last name Sims?”

“Yes, sir. It was. How’d you know, sir?”

“Chelle told me. You were on Johanna.”

“Yes, sir. I’m not supposed to tell anybody that, but you know already.”

“So was Chelle. She was hurt pretty badly there, perhaps by the same missile, although I don’t know that.” Skip returned his glass to the tray and rose to pace the floor. “Before we knew about Sergeant Kent-Jermyn’s group, Chelle gave Captain Kain her word that she wouldn’t go down into the hold. Her word’s usually good. Better than mine, I think. Achille—do you know Achille?”

Miles nodded. “The little guy with no hands? Yes, sir.”

“He’ll have hands again when we get back home. I’m going to get him replacements. I owe him, and I like to pay my debts.”

For a few moments Skip paced, swinging along with the pronounced roll of the ship and collecting his thoughts. “You know that Chelle assembled a force of her own and went down to rescue you. They were defeated, just as the group you were in were. A good many of them were killed and the rest were captured, including Chelle.”

Miles nodded again. “It’s called defeat in detail, sir. It’s what happens when you break up and let the enemy fight you piece by piece.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know that. You did, but you went down with Kent-Jermyn anyway.”

“Yes, sir. A raiding party of a few men can get a lot done sometimes. You and the skipper didn’t know the setup down there, for one thing. We found out.”

“I think I understand.” Skip sipped his beer and set it back down. “What I started out to say was that Achille came with a list of the captives. The hijackers had gotten all of you to write down your names.”

“Yes, sir, except for the ones who were hurt too bad to write. We wrote theirs for them.”

“I see. I believe that was before Angel Mendoza escaped?”

“Yes, sir. We wouldn’t have put down his name if he hadn’t been there.”

“I see.” For a few seconds, Skip paced in silence. “I’ve been assuming that he had a similar list. And of course he may have—he could have written such a list himself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think he did. When we found Chelle, she told me she needed a psychiatrist. She was joking, I’m sure; but many a truth is told in jest. As we took her up to J Deck, I asked what she’d meant by it; and she told me that when she’d read your names she felt compelled to get you men back, and that her compulsion to do it overrode every other consideration.”

“I don’t think I’ve got this yet, sir.”

“I think I do,” Skip said, “and right now that’s what matters. It involves Jane Sims and a note Chelle wrote once. It may also involve my secretary in some way, and I admit I don’t understand that yet. Perhaps I never will, but…” He smiled. “But we may get to the bottom of it today, Corporal Miles. I dare hope so.”

“Then so do I, sir.”

“Good! I want to take you to the infirmary to talk to Chelle. I want you to tell her about Jane Sims, in much more detail than you told me. And I want you to tell her how Jane Sims died. Did you see her body?”

“Yes, sir. Not for long, because the medics grabbed it and froze it. They use them for organ replacements, sir. Then the parts they can’t use—whatever’s chewed up too bad—get shipped home in a sealed coffin. People here don’t seem to understand that, but that’s how it is.”

“I see. Do you happen to know whether Jane Sims’s family has received such a coffin?”

“No, sir. I don’t, and I’d like to.”

Skip nodded, mostly to himself. “I have a man in Boswash, which is where I live, who’ll look into things like that for me. I’ll have him find out, and I’ll tell you what he learns.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“In return, I’d like you to talk to Chelle. Tell her what you’ve told me about Jane Sims, and about seeing her body. Describe it. Give her as much detail as you can remember.”