Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

There would be no one in Zygmunt’s office this late, but there would be an answering machine. Skip selected Zman from his contacts list. “This is Skip Grison. Here’s a phone number.” He read the number the white-bearded man had supplied. “Find out who’s answering that number and what they’re doing. It’s supposed to belong to somebody named Coleman Baum.” He spelled it. “See if he’s real.”

He leaned back, conscious that he was very tired, and conscious, too, that he sometimes made bad decisions when he was tired. Something hard tapped the door softly. He stood, went to the peephole, and opened the door to admit Achille.

“You want see me, mon?”

“Sit down.” Skip motioned toward the other chair. “Chelle’s taking a shower, and that ought to give us all the time we need. We’ll make port tomorrow. Will you go ashore?”

Achille shrugged. “Got to, mon. They don’t let me on the ship no more.”

“You could hide on board so that they would never find you. We both know that. Are you going to?”

“What you want, mon?”

“I want you to bring something in for me. There’ll be money in it for you.”

Achille thrust out his lower lip. “I’m going, mon. What you want?”

Skip unlocked his bag, rummaged through his dirty laundry, and produced the pistol he had wrested from Rick Johnson’s dead hand. “You could sell this in the city for a good price.”

Lips pursed, Achille nodded.

“I think I know about what you could get for it, but I’d like to hear your guess.”

Achille leaned closer to inspect the pistol. At last he shrugged. “I ask five thous’. You give it to me, mon? I split.”

“You’d ask five. What would you settle for?”

The spike that had replaced Achille’s right hand scratched his chin. “For four thous’, I think.”

“What about thirty-five hundred?”

“You sell for this? Sell to me?”

Skip shook his head.

“Then I don’ sell for him too.”

“All right, here’s my offer. This gun’s mine. If you can get it ashore and deliver it to me, at my office, I’ll give you three thousand noras. If you don’t deliver it, you’ll have turned a good friend into an enemy. I’ll see to it that you’re picked up and deported. Say no deal and walk away, if you won’t bring it to me. That way, we’re still friends.”

Achille hesitated. “Cash. Must be cash, mon, or I don’ bring.”

“Three thousand noras in cash. Furthermore, if you’re caught trying to bring it in, I’ll defend you; but only if you say nothing about me to anyone.”

Achille nodded. “I don’ never talk, mon.”

“I may have another gun for you before we dock. If so, I expect the same deal. You’ll get three thousand more when you deliver it to me. Six thousand in all.”

“I need him soon, mon. Where your office?”

Skip gave him a business card, tucking it into his shirt pocket.

When Achille had gone and Chelle remained in the bathroom, Skip telephoned the bridge. “Is Captain Kain there?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Skip Grison.”

“I’ll see, sir.”

A moment later the captain was on the line. “What’s up, Skip?”

“You dropped by our table at dinner. Virginia was there with an elderly man. Virginia Healy.”

“Yes.”

“I need information about the elderly man, and I’m hoping you’ve got some. Who is he?”

“His name? I think it’s Coleman Baum. He’s a first-class passenger.”

“Didn’t he shoot somebody? I think I heard that.”

“When we were fighting the hijackers? I doubt it. He’s too old.”

“Later. I’ve been told he shot one of Mick Tooley’s volunteers, a man named Rick Johnson.”

“I’ll call you back,” the captain said, and hung up.

Skip went out onto the veranda and sat down, staring at the sea.

* * *

He was still there when Chelle joined him.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? Beautiful and immoral.”

“I would have said amoral. What have you got on under that robe?”

“Nothing you can see until we’re in the cabin with the doors locked and the lights out.”

He smiled. “In that case—”

“Not yet. I want to talk. Women want to talk. Have you noticed?”

“No.” Skip shook his head.

“Liar! Everybody has. Did I ever tell you how I got to be a mastergunner?”

“I’m not a liar, I’m a lawyer. Tell me how you got to be a mastergunner.”

“I’ll bet I’ve told you before, but it’s an excuse to talk.”

“You haven’t.” He felt a surge of genuine curiosity. “How did you do it, Chelle?”

“Women make better shots than men. Wait, let me explain. There are men who shoot as well as any woman, a few men who shoot as well as anybody ever can. But men always think they know everything already. They’ll keep doing the same thing the instructor has told them twenty times not to do. Like this one student we had, Corporal Nesse. He could make a good fast shot and good slow shot. He could take his time and squeeze off four-hundred-meter groups about as good as you could get with a machine rest.”

Skip nodded, feeling it was expected of him.

“Only nothing in between. Put a target at the seventy-meter line drifting off to one side, and he’d shoot like it was ten meters. They sent him to sniper. Buck sergeant is all you get there.”

“What about you?” Skip asked.

“I noticed that all the other women wanted to sit down with the instructors and vent. The instructors didn’t have time for that. They had a lot to do. So I didn’t do it. Anytime I wanted to vent, I vented to somebody else. When I had something to say to an instructor, I said it and got the hell out. It meant I got special attention, because I didn’t take up any more time than they needed to give me.”

“I want to give you as much time as you want to take,” Skip said.

“I know. I appreciate it and I don’t want to abuse it, but what I’m trying to say is pretty tough to get out. I cheated on you with Jerry.”

Skip shrugged.

“You know about that. Right back there, in the same bed you and I sleep in.”

“Correct.”

“You also know that he gave me a card for his cabin on the signal deck. You probably think I went up there and we did it again there, only I didn’t. The only time I’ve been in that cabin was when Rick and what’s-her-name…”

“Susan.”

“Right. When they took me there.” Chelle’s hand found Skip’s and held it tightly while she stared out to sea for a minute and more. “I’ve cheated on you with somebody else, too.”

“I know,” he said.

“You do?”

He nodded.

“You know who?”

“Yes,” he said. “If you want to talk about it, we can. If you don’t, we don’t have to.”

“I’m sorry. You—you were in a coma, and it just happened.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Then I wanted to tell him we were finished and there would be no more. Only it happened again.” For a moment she was quiet. “I know how that must sound. Why aren’t you mad?”

It was a good question, and he tried to think of a good answer. “Because I love you so much. I’m angry at Mick, but I owe him a great deal.” Skip paused. “I would have said I’d never be able to repay him, but maybe I have. If I act as if I don’t know and let him go on thinking that I don’t know, maybe it will be paying what I owe.”

“I’m money? A kind of money?”

He shook his head.

“Would you have asked me to do it? Because he wanted me, as a way to pay him back?”

“Of course not.” Skip sighed. “I’m creating this after the fact. You don’t have to tell me that. I could pull the rug out from under him. Destroy his career. I don’t want to do it. I could void our contract and get a couple of clients to break your legs. I don’t want to do that either.”