Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

Skip smiled. “No doubt you’re right. Tell him I’ll be there.”

After picking up his new card at the manager’s office, Skip went to the bank and left with three thousand noras in his briefcase. When he reached the offices of Burton, Grison, and Ibarra, Achille was lounging in the waiting room, his left hook through the handle of a battered black lunch box. Skip nodded, motioned to him, and led him into a small conference room.

“I bring what you give me, mon. I give him back. You got the money?”

“Right here.”

“You show him, I show you.”

“Fair enough.” Skip opened his briefcase and produced packets of bills. “Three thousand was the price we agreed on. These are fifties. There are twenty banded together in each stack, so each stack is a thousand noras. If you want to count them, go ahead.”

“I look at, mon.” Achille’s right hook drew a packet to him. His left held it down while his right tore the paper band.

“Some are new, some aren’t. The bank didn’t have sixty used fifties.”

Achille nodded—mostly, as it seemed, to himself. “Look good, mon. Look real good.” Picking up the lunch box, he put it on Skip’s desk. “You look, too. I don’ cheat you, mon.”

Opened, the lunch box revealed a soiled red rag. Skip took it out.

His gun, the sleek gray pistol he had wrenched from Rick Johnson’s dead hand, lay upon an even dirtier rag that had once been white. Skip picked the gun up, took out the magazine, and pulled back the slide far enough to see that there was a round in the chamber.

“I don’ shoot him, mon. I don’ do nothin’ to him. He is like you give him to me.”

“It’s good to see it again.”

“I got more. Open like before.”

Skip did.

“That man got shot? You got his gun. I got his bullets.”

Skip lifted the dirty white rag, finding it heavy and tightly knotted.

“I don’ want him to make no noise,” Achille explained.

“I understand. How much for the ammunition?”

Achille shook his head. “You say friends? I can be good friend, too.”

Skip felt cartridges through the rag and set it down. “I understand. You’ve earned that money. Take it.”

Achille did, inserting the still-banded packets in his pockets dexterously, before he pushed the other bills into a loose stack.

“Want some help with those?”

“I do it, mon. I drop, I get back.” He held the stack down with the side of his left hook and folded it over with his right, held it between both hooks, and bit the fold. One hook pulled his filthy shirt out; he bent his head and dropped the bills into it

“You’re amazing, Achille.”

“Got to be, mon. You know what I do now? Get new hands, the best. They got good here.”

Skip nodded.

“I clean up, first. You think I like be dirty? I don’, only I been long time. On ship I get shower. Got soap in bottle. I pour on my head, rub with arms, only I don’ wash clothes. Need woman for wash. New clothes now an’ get room.”

Skip smiled. “And after that?”

“New hands, the best. Go somewhere, not here. Only I need paper for police. You know?”

“Indeed I do. Wait a minute.” Skip clicked an icon, scrolled, wrote on a pad, and tore off the sheet. “Can you read this?”

Achille glanced at the sheet. “Sure, mon. Miguel Fonseca.”

“Correct. He may be able to help you. Tell him I sent you.”

“I got it, mon. What cost?”

Skip considered. “It should be under two hundred. He’ll ask a lot more if he knows how much you have.”

“You say him?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I don’ neither, mon.” Achille rose, grinning. “I got hands, know what I do here? I hold gun, you give me noras, an’ I run.”

“Would you really do that? I don’t believe you.”

Achille shrugged. “Maybe. I don’ know. Merci pour votre aide , mon. Get new hands, papers, go new place. Go Cayenne, maybe. You know Cayenne?”

Skip shook his head.

“I don’ neither. Maybe nice place for me. Only I don’ see you no more.” Achille held out his spiked hook.

Skip rose and shook it. “It’s possible we’ll meet again. I doubt it, but you never know.”

“Is so, mon.”

A minute or more after Achille had gone, Skip sat down. For a still longer time, he stared at nothing, sitting quietly with both hands flat upon the polished surface of his desk.

At last he picked up one of the compact telephones there. “Dianne, there’s a legal arm down at the south end of the city that represents all the armed services; I think it may be called the Judge Advocate’s Department. I want to talk to somebody there, a receptionist if I have to, or a liaison with the civilian justice establishment, if they have one.”

He was silent for a few seconds, listening.

“Yes, whatever you can get. I don’t know who I should be talking to, but I’ve got to start somewhere.” He hung up.

Another telephone chimed at once, and he answered it. Boris’s long, worried face filled the tiny screen. “I’ve been looking for Stanley Zygmunt, Christine Vergara, and Wendy Kaya, sir.”

Skip nodded. “What have you got?”

“Stanley Zygmunt is dead, sir. That was why I called. His body turned up this morning. As of now, I haven’t been able to find out where it was or how he died. Or even what condition it was in. They’re being very closemouthed about the whole thing.”

“I see.”

“The women seem to be missing, sir. Both of them. The police have them listed as missing persons.” Boris cleared his throat. “There’s no investigation of missing persons, sir. I’m sure you know. They just wait for something to show up on the computer.”

“Correct. Discontinue your inquiry—I don’t want to lose you.”

For a moment Boris was quiet; then he said, “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome.” Skip hung up.

Someone once said that to destroy a man one need only bring his work to naught. I would say instead that to destroy a man the Fates need only grant his wish. For me—

What of Chelle? She went into space, saying that when she returned she would have a rich contracto and I a young and beautiful contracta. Chelle hasn’t been destroyed, nor would I wish her to be. As for me … Well, I wished more deeply. For Chelle on Johanna or Gehenna or wherever it was, there can only have been the wish to live. That wish, and that wish alone, if not always at least on many days. She will have wanted life and natural sleep, and no death, no pain.

She very nearly died. Without Jane Sims, she would have died, perhaps; she can’t have thought a lot about Earth and a rich contracto. I dreamed of Chelle for hours, almost every day. Granted one wish, I would have wished for what I got, Chelle stepping out of the shuttle, Chelle in my arms.

Yes, even though she did not know me.

I knew then what I had known earlier, although I was loath to admit it. I knew I’d have to win her again, win her a second time; and I told myself that as I had won her once I would win her again, and that I’d begin my second courtship with enormous advantages I had lacked for the first: wealth, position, and a contract already in force.

They have not availed. Should I give up? To give up would be to welcome death, to agree to it, to surrender to it. I will not. My wish has never changed. “If wishes were cobblestones there would be no grass.” Cobblestones could not hurt more.

I never welcomed death on the Rani . Some hid and some cowered, and I understood both all too well. The courtroom had given me so much practice, putting on a brave face for clients I knew would perish, pressing each argument with every fact I could lay hand to—and every sophistry. With conviction, above all. Conviction is the seed of passion, and before nine juries in ten passion will carry the day. How often have I won cases I knew were lost?