Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

Chelle whispered, “Say yes.”

“I … We’ll come of course. It’s very kind of you. If I sound strange, I just woke up. I seem to have slept for hours.”

“You regained consciousness,” Vanessa told him. “Do you remember what day it was when that horrible cyborg shot you? What day of the week?”

“Yes. Wednesday. Wednesday evening, I believe.”

“Wednesday night. This is Saturday, Skip. It’s, um, eleven thirty-one. There were … complications. Chelle knows more about all that than I do, and she’ll tell you everything, I’m sure. Will you come to dinner? Please? We’ve been so worried!”

“Certainly. We’ll be delighted. I think I already said that.”

“You did. I just wanted to make sure. It’s Formal Night. Isn’t that just marvelous? We get a Formal Night before we make port. Richard wants to show everybody that things are finally back to normal, even if he does have to cut the cruise short. You won’t mention Richard tonight? Promise? Nothing about Richard and me?”

“Promise,” Skip said. “May I ask how you knew I was no longer in a coma?”

“I didn’t, really. I talked to Chelle about an hour ago—inviting her, you know—and she told me you were beginning to stir. She suggested I call back in an hour because you might be well enough for dinner tonight. The first-class dining room? Twenty hundred? Would that be convenient?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Charles desires to explain, Skip, and I’ve told him he ought to retain you as his attorney. I think he may face criminal charges, even though it was just a cyborg he killed. Richard isn’t confining him, which I think truly noble of him. Don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, indeed.”

“It’s all settled then. Just the four of us, and we’ll have a nice talk. Twenty hundred. Dinner jacket. You do have a dinner jacket, don’t you, Skip? If you don’t, I can—”

“I do.” Skip said. A moment later he hung up.

“We’ll have a wonderful time,” Chelle told him. “Family! There’s nothing quite like family.”

“A great deal seems to have happened while I was ill.”

“Not really. Things got back to normal, that’s all.” Chelle went to him and kissed his forehead. “Everything was fixed, and you were the one who fixed it. We’ve still got the hijackers locked up and we’ve got wounded on board, but—”

“Including you.”

“Sure, only my arm’s mending nicely, so Dr. Ueda let me go. She let you go, too.…”

“Because I was healing nicely?”

Chelle shook her head. “She didn’t say this, but I think it was really because she couldn’t do anything more for you. She said you might need brain surgery—that isn’t what she called it, but that’s what she meant.”

“I hope you’re joking.”

“And she wasn’t qualified. She’s a pediatrician. Do you really want to hear all this?”

“Absolutely.”

“Aren’t you hungry? You can’t have eaten since Wednesday. I could order something.”

“No. Tell me.”

“You had a blood clot on your brain. That’s what put you in the coma. She gave you some stuff she said might dissolve it, and I guess it did. Only if it didn’t you’d need a brain surgeon.”

“According to a pediatrician.”

“Right. Only she seemed to know what she was talking about. She told me about a patient of hers. He fell off a swing.”

“And tonight I’m going to dinner. Who’s Charles?”

“Smokin’ shit! Don’t tell me she’s found a new guy! Wait a minute.” Chelle’s phone had played again, and she flipped it open. “Hello. What is it? That’s right, he’s fully conscious, sitting up and talking. He’s doing great.” She grinned at Skip. “Okay. As soon as I can get there. Bye.”

“Who was that?”

Chelle rose. “Nothing important. Now listen. You’re supposed to get an intravenous feeding, only they haven’t been in here yet. They’re terribly shorthanded. So order yourself something to eat. And eat it.”

“Chelle—”

“Gotta see a man about a mine. I’ll be back soon.” She breezed out.

Tentatively, he swung his feet over the edge of the bed. For a moment, it seemed that the ship was pitching as it had in the storm, but the moment passed. He felt a little light-headed, his two-cocktails-at-lunch feeling; otherwise, things were quite normal. He shaved, and well before he had finished discovered that he was ravenous. First-class dining would open for lunch at twelve thirty, assuming that “Richard” had really returned the ship to normal.

He showered, and decided he would go down to lunch alone if Chelle had not returned. He could leave her a note.

His gun was beneath the clothing that someone (almost certainly Chelle) had heaped on a chair. It reminded him of his submachine gun. It was under the bed. He—they—would be permitted to take no weapons ashore with them. Chelle would certainly try to smuggle her gun out, and would presumably be arrested for it.

Well, she knew a good lawyer. Selecting her mobile phone brought a tune from the upper right-hand drawer of the bureau.

After dressing, he called the second-class bar. The barman knew Chelle and swore she had not been in that day. The first-class bar in that case.

“This is Chick, Mr. Grison. What can I do for you?”

“I’m trying to find Chelle. Mastergunner Chelle Blue. Do you know her?”

“Sure, Mr. Grison. She was in here with Mr. Tooley. They had a drink and talked, you know. The little table in the corner. They left, oh, maybe five minutes ago.”

Mick Tooley’s phone was out of service. Skip called his building instead and spoke with his manager.

When that call was over, he put on sunglasses and left the bedroom for the veranda, finding the rolling gray-green water of the Atlantic even more conducive to thought than the blue Caribbean had been. “Charles” White (whoever that was) might be prosecuted and Vanessa wanted him retained. Might he himself be prosecuted? He found, oddly enough, that he hoped he would be—and could not explain the hope even to himself. Guilt about Susan? It seemed possible, though the thought woke no shock of recognition. Where was Susan, anyway? Had somebody killed her? If so, who?

How many people had he defended whose sole crime was resisting criminals? A hundred, perhaps? Not so many as that, but the almighty law—which would defend no one but politicians—hated those who defended themselves. His guns, most of all his submachine gun, would be flourished to persuade a jury that he was a menace.

What about Chelle’s gun? With her mother still in danger, she would insist on keeping it.…

There was another veranda beneath his own, the veranda to which Lieutenant Jerry Brice had dropped when he had vaulted over this rail. Beyond that, E Deck. He might—or might not—succeed in throwing his pistol into the Atlantic from here. An athlete might have thrown the submachine gun too. He most certainly could not.

He pushed his pistol into his waistband, where it would be concealed by his untucked shirt. Everyone who had a pistol had been carrying it everywhere when he had been shot, most openly. Was it still like that? Formal Night implied that it was not. His laundry bag, plus a few soiled shirts and shorts, concealed the submachine gun.

It was much harder than he had expected to let that submachine gun drop into the Atlantic, but he did it. After vacillating for a minute and more, he returned his pistol to his waistband. There was plenty of time, after all.

* * *

The barmaid in the tourist-class bar knew Achille but had not seen him that day. “We open at eleven,” she said. “We get maybe half a dozen people then. Mostly they have a quick shot or maybe a double, then they’re gone. You want somethin’?”