Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

The man grinned. “No, sir. My name’s Gary.” He accepted Skip’s hand and shook it. “I’m Gary Oberdorf.”

Vanessa asked, “Is there a man named Jerry who works with you, Mr. Oberdorf?”

Skip began, “This is Gary—”

“We’ve already met.” Vanessa smiled. “He fixed a filing-cabinet drawer for me. Now it seems like a long time ago.”

“Nobody,” Oberdorf said. “There’s only four of us, ma’am. That’s Eddie Qualter, Walt Weber, Ray Upjohn, and me. Listen, I’d like to talk to you folks, but I’ve got to change the lock on Lieutenant Brice’s door.”

“We’ll walk with you,” Skip told him. “What’s the matter with Lieutenant Brice’s lock? Did someone break in?”

“No, sir. It’s just that he’s lost one card. The officers get two, just like passengers. Only he lost one, and anybody who finds it could go into his stateroom and take everything he’s got.”

“I see.” Skip nodded to himself. “Brice is in the infirmary, isn’t he? Isn’t he the officer who was shot?”

“Yes, sir. He was in the Navy, and I guess they get training there with pistols and so on. Only he had some bad luck.”

“A former serviceman.” Skip nodded again. “I don’t suppose you know his first name?”

“No, sir. No, I don’t.”

“Virginia?”

She shook her head.

“You got that li’l fold-away phone,” Trinity remarked. “I got me one, too.” She displayed it, flipped it open, and pressed keys. “Silvia, honey, this Trinity. You got that Lieutenant Brice where you workin’ now? I got a lady asking ’bout his first name. You know what ’tis?”

A moment later she thanked the woman she had called Silvia and closed her phone. “His name Gerard,” she told Vanessa.

Skip touched his lips before turning to Oberdorf. “Do you know how he happened to lose his cabin card?”

“I haven’t talked to him, sir.” He pressed the worn button that summoned the elevator. “But I know a lot of people lose things in the infirmary. They’ve got those lockers in there, and they hang the patients’ clothes in them. Only they don’t lock. Visitors come in and go out all the time. I got my foot broke once, and they put me in there for a couple of days before we made port, so I know how it is.”

“Chelle had a private room,” Skip said.

“Is that a lady? They’ve got two rooms like that for women, because it’s nearly all men. So they get those and don’t hear the nasty words. Not that they don’t know them already, if you ask me.”

The freight elevator arrived. They went into it, and Oberdorf pressed a button for the signal deck.

“I don’t understand this at all,” Vanessa whispered.

“Later,” Skip told her, and turned to Oberdorf. “Will you have to open the door to change the lock?”

“Sure. That’s the only way you can get those locks out, sir. You open the door, take off both knobs, and slip the lock out the side. That lets you get at the little keyboard. When you’ve got it, you can wipe the old code and stick in your new card. Press a couple of buttons and your new card opens the lock.”

“I see.”

“Hotels and so on use a different system, mostly. They can send a wireless signal that will change the code. Only a hell of a lot of people can send them now, and read them, too. Ours is more secure.”

“You’ve got to have a card?”

“Yes, sir. Or a master. Got to be able to open that lock before you can change the lock. Only a hell of a lot of passengers just walk off with their cards at the end of the cruise, sir. We try to get them to turn them in.” He shrugged.

“But they don’t.”

“Right. About half don’t. So one of the things we’ve got to do when we refit is recode those locks. Generally it takes one man four days to do them all. After the last cruise it took Walt and Ray three.”

Skip had to brace himself against the side of the elevator.

“She pitchin’ now,” Trinity remarked. “This wind behind her. Don’t nobody like it.”

Vanessa said, “It must make us sail faster, though.”

“No, ma’am. Off to the side and jus’ a little bitty bit back is what they want. That’s the fastest, and don’t pitch much. Don’t roll much neither.”

“Are we gonna sink?” Jerry clearly hoped they would.

“Not us, honey. We been through lots worse than what this is.”

The elevator doors slid open. The ship’s motion seemed more pronounced here, the thunder almost deafening. Oberdorf ambled down the corridor, compensating for the pitching floor without apparent effort.

Skip hung back. “There might be shooting.” He kept his voice down. “I’ll take the lead. Try your best not to shoot me in the back.”

“How ’bout this li’l boy?”

“Keep him away from the doorway.”

As they neared the door, Oberdorf slid a master cabin card into the lock, pushed the door open, and froze.

“Come in.” To Skip, still a dozen steps away, it sounded like an old man’s voice.

“Come in. We must talk to you.”

Oberdorf raised his hands, and Skip drew his gun.

* * *

When consciousness returned, he could not remember firing or being shot. Nor did he, for a minute and more, know where he was. He knew only that his head felt ready to split.

His questing fingers found a broad strip of tape.

Someone’s shoes were rather too near his eyes. They were white and nearly new, wing-tip shoes with pointed toes and a sprinkling of vent holes. He studied them, and could not have said for how long. Having marooned him, time had not yet returned for him.

White shoes, and the crutch-tipped end of a blackthorn walking stick.

Voices droned overhead: A man’s voice, quick and clipped, youthful and energetic. Another man’s, quietly humorous and overprecise. A woman’s, dark, frustrated, and angry. Another woman’s, mocking and almost too proper. A third, tremulous with … fear? Anger? A boy’s.

Then a new woman’s, violent, profane, and lovely beyond every other voice in the world.

Skip sat up. The man seated in front of him had overlong white hair, a wide white mustache, and a neatly trimmed white beard, the beard shaped like the blade of a spade. Blue eyes swam behind thick lenses.

“Skip!” It was she, and in a moment she was on her knees beside him, her sound arm embracing him and her immobilized right arm trying to. She kissed him and kissed him again, and he was too stunned to respond. Thunder roared outside, lightning flashed beyond the glass doors, and he longed, suddenly and painfully, to make love to her in the midst of such a storm. They had never done it, and it seemed likely that they never would.

“I told you we shouldn’t have untied her.” Rick Johnson needed no handhold to brace himself against the pitching of the ship.

“Quite the contrary,” the older man replied. “The wisdom of my course is being made apparent to you. You are too stiff-necked to see it, which is a real pity.”

On Skip’s left, Oberdorf said, “They’re going to kill us.”

“These amateurs?” Chelle broke off another kiss to snarl it.

“I’m no amateur,” Johnson told her.

“It seems unlikely.” At that moment, Skip felt that he would sell his soul for two acetaminophen tablets and a glass of water. “It seems much more probable that some accommodation can be reached.”

“I’m going to k-kill you, Mr. Grison.” Susan’s face was tearstained. “Mr. White says I can. That I can be the w-w-one if we decide to.”

“Do you really hate me that much?”

“No! Don’t you see?” Her voice shook; so did the hand that gripped her short-barreled revolver. “I’ll k-kill you because I l-love you. It ought to be somebody like me, somebody who l-l-loves you.”