Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

If Rick believed that Charles Blue was a fellow agent—as he unquestionably did—would Rick not have feared Charles Blue’s report? Charles Blue would report that he had tried to preserve the life of the woman who carried the information they sought (information that could surely be obtained by a brain scan), but that Rick had panicked, defied his order, and killed her. Rick must have foreseen that difficulty before I regained consciousness. Once he had foreseen it, his course would have been plain: kill Charles Blue and report that Charles Blue had killed Chelle. He would have one more body to dispose of—six bodies instead five would be no great increase.

What about the authorities here, Charles Blue’s human employers? Chelle cannot know anything that they do not already know. They financed the research, and Jane Sims willingly became an Army officer; so they have it. Even if they didn’t have it before debriefing Chelle (but they did) they certainly learned anything she may have known at that time. After learning it they would certainly have wiped it.

Their reasons for classifying her as mentally and emotionally unstable are quite plain; she shelters a secondary personality. Since its cause is organic, mere psychiatric treatment will not benefit her. Surgery might cure her—but it might kill her, too, and it would be fiendishly expensive. Better to let her go, which is what they did.

Would it have been better to take Rick alive? Almost certainly not. Who knows what may be learned from his wreckage? If he had been captured, he would very likely have killed himself in way that would have destroyed all the information of interest. Provision for that would be an elementary precaution. As things stand, the NAU still has Chelle for bait. If another Os agent bites, so much the better. She will be in danger, clearly. But her father and his NAU employers will do their level best to keep her alive and sane. The fishermen have found a fine lure. They will want to keep it.

But do I?

The building manager met Skip and Chelle in the little lobby beyond the dedicated elevator. “I hope you’ll like it, sir,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of time.”

“It’s whether Chelle will like it.” Skip glanced at her; she smiled but did not speak.

“Everything’s on approval, you understand—all the furniture as well as the pictures. Ms. Moretti charges a base fee for her work, but the furniture and pictures can be returned for full credit. That’s individual pieces or everything. It’s strictly up to you.”

Chelle said, “I’m sure I’ll like it.”

And Skip, “Let’s see it.”

“It’s terribly—ah—plain.” The building manager looked apprehensive. “Simple, you know. Made by Navajos, mostly. The same sort of furniture they built for the first missionaries hundreds of years ago. Functional and sturdy.”

“I like that chair.” Chelle pointed. “And the settle with the serape over it. Isn’t that what you call it? A settle?”

Skip shrugged.

The building manager said, “I’m sure you’re right, contracta.”

Skip held out his hand for their cards, received two, and opened the door.

Chelle followed him in, shutting it behind her. “This is the penthouse? You said that. Very posh!”

“I hope you’ll enjoy it.” Skip was looking at the snow-covered roof garden through a Changeglass window that stretched from floor to ceiling.

She joined him. “You know, you tell me a lot, but you don’t tell me everything.”

“It would bore you to tears. It would bore me just reciting it all, for that matter. I answer your questions as honestly as I can, whenever I can.”

“There was no tele on Johanna, maybe I told you.” She sounded thoughtful, and almost dreamy. “No tele, but we got to watch telefilms now and then. Long shows made for tele, that had run for an hour every night for a week back on Earth.”

“I know what they are.”

“After six weeks on line, you went back to a rest camp for a week. You could shower every day if you wanted to, and sleep and sleep with nobody to wake you up. Most of us slept ’til lunch.”

Waiting, he nodded.

“There’d be a telefilm as soon as it got dark. Hot dogs and nachos and all that, just like at home. Popcorn. Everybody missed junk food. You didn’t have to go, but everybody did.”

“Comedies?”

“Sometimes, only we laughed more at the war stuff, the propaganda ones.” Chelle fell silent, remembering, pensive and beautiful.

“Go on.”

“Only twice they had … I don’t know what you would call them. They were really lovely and terribly ugly, and the people in them were interesting. Only nothing was ever settled. Nothing in them really made sense.”

“Art shows,” Skip said.

“I guess. Only after the second one, it came to me. They were real life—it was what our lives are like. It sure as hell was what mine had been like.”

The lights flickered.

“I’d left the place where everybody tried to dominate me to come to a place where the Os were doing their level fucking best to kill me, and if I could fight way out here and live, why couldn’t I fight back there? Why go so many light-years away?”

“You’re back now.” He handed her one of the cards.

“Right. They made me go back.” Chelle dropped into a comfortable-looking, rather mannish chair, laying the card he had given her on its broad, flat arm. “When I saw that kind, I wanted to shove the director into a corner and swear to God I’d kill him unless he explained everything. I’ll shoot you in the fuckin’ head—that’s what I’d say.”

“I’ve been shot in the head already,” Skip pointed out.

“Yeah.” Chelle looked disgusted. “You’re way out in front as usual. But you’re the director.”

“Far from it. I don’t even know who runs the show.”

“Just for now you are. I just appointed you. When we were living in your place down on whatever floor it is—I mean before we got on that cruise boat—you called this building your building. When you said it, I thought you meant you lived here.”

He grinned. “I do.”

“Sure. Only it really is your building. You own it, right?”

“There are legal complications, incorporation and so on, but yes. I do.”

“There was somebody else living here then?”

Skip nodded.

“Only you kicked him out. That’s what you told me you were going to do on the boat.”

“I did not. We bought out his lease, that’s all. It had less than a year to run, and we were negotiating a new one. We dropped the negotiations and offered him a profit on his remaining time. He took it.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The man you just met. He manages the building for me. I told him what I wanted, and he called me when he had a deal. I told him to take it, clean and fix everything, and line up a decent decorator, meaning not one of the crazy ones, to pick out furniture.”

“Your decorator will have gotten a kickback from the guy who sold him the furniture.”

“Her. Of course she will. What would you have done?”

“Picked it out myself while we lived in your old place, I guess.”

“I see. Do you know a lot about furniture?”

Chelle shook her head. “I like this. How did you know?”

“I didn’t. She did. Am I finished as director?”

“Hell, no! You’ve hardly started. You said Charlie was a double agent.”

“I didn’t.” Skip sighed and leaned against a small but sturdy table, suddenly weary. “I said he had a get-out-of-jail card of some kind. That if he hadn’t had one Captain Kain would have locked him up, that he must have told the captain to contact the Civil Intelligence Bureau or some such place. That Captain Kain had, and had been told to release him. You wanted to know how he could have gotten such a thing, and I said that he might be a double agent. That was one possibility and it seemed the most likely.”