Castle of Days (1992) SSC

by Gene Wolfe

  Dives (I’m going to call him that because his mother didn’t) thanked me and tried to give me some money. I didn’t take it—there was quite a bit of it, and I figured if he let go of that much that easy the thing to do was get close to him, not piss it away for a few lousy Cs.

  The first thing I noticed about him was that his nose had been broken a lot, like an old fighter’s; and there were a bunch of little scars on his face. I found out afterward that they were from surgery to erase bigger scars, and one of his eyes was solid state. After a while he said, “Where are we going?” and I said anywhere he wanted to, that I figured he might be a little shaky yet and I’d drop him off. Naturally I was figuring he’d want to go home, and then since I’d pulled him out of trouble and turned down his money he’d have to have me in for a drink and we’d be buddies.

  He said, “Why don’t we go to my apartment for a drink?” and gave his address to the autodriver (a Park Avenue address that sounded like a million) and the funny thing was that I could see him seeing through me and not caring. He was thinking: This guy sees I’ve got money; so he figures he’s going to be my friend—okay, that’s the only kind I’m ever going to have, and maybe he plays pinochle. I didn’t like it but I figured I’d better go along.

  He bought a new mask from the driver, but it turned out he didn’t really need it, because it was a million-dollar address like I thought, and we could jump right out of the totally enclosed environment of the aircab into the big one of his building without even putting anything on. “Neat,” I said, looking around his private lobby, and it really was neat, all hologram walls, real as hell, a big valley way up in the mountains somewhere, where you couldn’t see a road or a house or anything at all, and the trees and bushes and weeds and everything were all green, like nothing was killing them.

  “A piece of property I used to own,” he said.

  I said, “I bet it don’t look like that now.”

  Then he said, “No, it doesn’t … when I was trying to promote it I called it Beautyland—ever hear of it?” and when I shook my head one of the biggest damn androids I ever saw came out of the wallpaper—that was what it seemed like—and shook me down. He was brand new and his platinum trim said he had all the gadgets and he moved in that easy, gentle way they do when all their skin’s two-centimeter armor plate.

  I stayed mighty still, believe me, until he was finished; then I said, “That was some kind of password, huh? I should of said I heard of it.”

  Dives said, “Have you?”

  “Like I said, no. But if you want me to lie a little that’s okay.” Then I thought it might be a good move to remind him of what I did for him, so I said, “Listen, why don’t you take the big guy here with you when you go out, then you wouldn’t need me,” and the android nodded and said, He is right they have hurt you again, Master. He had the kind of deep voice they always give them.

  The rich guy (that was a two-grand suit, by the way, if I ever saw one) just shrugged and said, “I think I owe them a chance at me from time to time. Come on in and we’ll have that drink.”

  It was real class. The android took our verbal orders and relayed them to the Barmaster, then served them on a tray. Dives had brandy and I had vodka on the rocks, and when I picked it up he said, “You’ve been in prison, haven’t you?” I nodded and told him they were called Social Reorientation Farms now and asked him how he knew, and he said he had spent some time on one himself. Naturally I asked him where, and when he had got out.

  “Over a year ago. I was only there for six weeks—I had tried to kill myself, but it passed pretty quickly.”

  I told him that was lucky—I’d tried to make a killing and spent over eight years.

  He wasn’t paying much attention. He said, “I saw people drinking like that there. They fermented mash in the back of the laundry, but ice was nearly impossible to get, and when they had it they drank the way you do—holding the biggest piece in their mouths and drawing the liquor past it. That was why you didn’t know about Beautyland; you were in prison.”

  I said I’d never try to defraud anyone else again; they’d gotten all that out of me.

  “And I’ll never try to take my own life again, either. At least, not directly.” He pulled out a remote control for the android and hit the OFF button. I could see the thing turn off all right, and after a minute he threw the control into a far corner of the room. “That wasn’t my only defense,” he said, “but it was my principal one, and I won’t use the others.”

  I said that was okay by me, but if someone came busting in I was going to make a dive for the control and turn it right back on again. I would have done it too—I’ve never had that much muscle on my side and I would like just once to see how it feels.

  He said, “I don’t think you’ll want to turn him back on after you’ve heard me; I want to tell you about my valley.”

  I said, “Suppose after I’ve heard you I don’t want to break your neck.”

  “Then we’ll play chess. Or whatever you want. That valley belonged to me, and I loved it. You saw it.”

  I said, “Sure.”

  “But I couldn’t live in it—to live in it would be to spoil it, to ruin it. You saw that. I thought of selling it to the government, but you know what has become of the national parks; developers offered me a lot of money for it—at least, what I thought was a lot of money then—but I knew what they were going to do if I sold my land to them. Meanwhile I had to take a job in a factory to live.”

  I was looking around at his apartment. I said, “Then you got a real bright idea.”

  “I thought I did. I thought I had figured out a way to make money out of the valley without destroying it. Using the land as collateral I got a loan, and with the money I had a biological survey made. Let me show you one of my ads.”

  He had it all set up and ready to roll. The TV wall went on and showed the same kind of picture that had been out in the lobby—I guess the same place—and one of those plastic voices said, “They call it BEAUTYLAND, and only you can save it.” Then the picture turned to fire.

  Dives said, “We had every tree, every damn plant, numbered. The idea was that we were going to sell them, item by item. There were eighteen rabbits in the valley and we named them all and got a picture of every one of them. There were six deer—I guess they may have been about the only wild deer left in the United States—and we named them too. I wanted three hundred thousand each for those deer; the highest-priced tree was a hundred and fifty thousand—it was an oak that must have been a couple of meters thick. See, the idea was that we were going to destroy anything that wasn’t bought.”

  I said, “Give me that again.”

  “Anything the world didn’t pay for—or somebody in it—I was going to burn. It all belonged to me, and they couldn’t stop me. I had a flame projector made; you saw it a minute ago, because we used it in shooting that spot.” He turned off the TV with a wave of his hand. “What they did pay for would be saved forever. None of this Mickey Mouse stuff the government does—we were going to build a wall around the place and keep everybody out. It could be photographed if you wanted from towers on the outside, but that was as close as anyone would be allowed to get. But first anything that wasn’t paid for by somebody burned. You see, I thought someone would pay for all of it, or nearly all.”

  I asked, “How did you do?”

  “We didn’t,” he said. “A few old ladies bought wild flowers and that was the end of it.”

  I waited for him to go on, and after a long time he said, “We called the best rabbit Benny Bunny, and a big part of the campaign was geared around the slogan Save Benny Bunny for Beautyland. Benny Bunny was supposed to cost fifty-five thousand. I got five hundred toward saving him from some elementary school in New Jersey; I sent it back and they wrote me later they used the money to buy some sparrow tapes.”

  “So you burned the stuff?”

  “We burned it,” he said, “yes.”

  I waited for him to tell me how h
e had swung it.

  “I went back to the office I had rented,” he said, “one morning after it had become apparent that the whole thing wasn’t going to work. Our deadline was past, and our deadline extension was past, and the bank was closing in on me, though they must have known I didn’t have any way to pay them off. I had talked to the media the night before and told them I didn’t have the heart to burn the things myself—I was going to hire somebody to do it.”

  I kept on waiting.

  “There was a line there, waiting for me to come. It went around the block twice—all kinds of people.”

  “Looking for jobs?”

  “That’s what they said, but that wasn’t really it—I talked to some of them and they just wanted to do it. One of them—about the fifth or sixth one I talked to, I think—tried to bribe me. You can probably guess what came next.”

  “You put on a new campaign,” I said.

  “I didn’t have to—I just announced it. I doubled and tripled the price of everything, but I was a sucker there—I could have gotten more for the deer and the rabbits. And the birds. They fought each other to pay my price for those.”

  I said, “You should have auctioned them.”

  “Yes, I should have, but it’s too late now. We did it at night so the flames would show up on cameara better—I got three million for the TV rights—and Benny Bunny got clear down onto one of the interstates before the man who had paid out a hundred and sixty-five thousand for the privilege nailed him. As it was he nearly lost him to a station wagon; he was the president of a big oil company, so I thought that was kind of ironic.”

  I said that I imagined there had been a lot of little quirky things like that.

  He nodded and said, “I thought you might like to know how I made my money,” and I told him I didn’t give a damn as long as it was there.

  MOTHER’S DAY

  Car Sinister

  Q: What do you get if you cross a raccoon with a greyhound?

  A: A furry brown animal that climbs trees and seats forty people.

  —GRADE SCHOOL JOKE

  There are three gas stations in our village. I suppose before I get any deeper into this I should explain that it really is a village, and not a suburb. There are two grocery stores (privately owned and so small my wife has to go to both when she wants to bake a cake), a hardware store with the post office in one corner, and the three gas stations.

  Two of these are operated by major oil companies, and for convenience I’ll call them the one I go to and the other one. I have a credit card for the one I go to, which is clean, well run, and trustworthy on minor repairs. I have no reason to think the other one is any different, in fact it looks just the same except for the colors on the sign, and I’ve noticed that the two of them exchange small favors when the need arises. They are on opposite sides of the main road (it is the kind of road that was called a highway in the nineteen thirties), and I suppose both managers feel they’re getting their share.

  The third station isn’t like that at all; it looks quite different and sells a brand of gasoline I’ve never seen anywhere else. This third station is at the low end of the village, run by a man called Bosko. Bosko appears stupid although I don’t think he really is, and always wears an army fatigue hat and a gray coat that was once part of a bus driver’s uniform. Another man—a boy, really—helps Bosko. The boy’s name is Bubber; he is usually even dirtier than Bosko, and has something wrong with the shape of his head.

  I own a Rambler American and, as I said, always have it serviced at one of the major-brand stations. I might add that I work in the city, driving thirty miles each way, and the car is very important to me; so I would never have taken it to Bosko’s if it hadn’t been for that foolish business about my credit card. I lost it, you see. I don’t know where. Naturally I telegraphed the company, but before I got my new card I had to have the car serviced.

  Of course, what I should have done was to go to my usual station and pay cash. But I wondered if the manager might not be curious and check his list of defaulting cards. I understand that the companies take great pains to keep these lists up to date, and since it had been two days since I’d wired them, it wasn’t out of the question to suppose that my number would be there, and that he’d think I was a bad credit risk. A thing like that gets around fast in our village. I shouldn’t really have worried about something like that, I know, but it was late and I was tired. And of course the other major oil company station would be even worse. The manager of my station would have seen me right across the road.

  At any rate I was going on a trip the next day, and I thought of the old station at the low end of the village. I only wanted a grease job and an oil change. Hundreds, or at least dozens, of people must patronize the place every day. What could go wrong?

  Bosko—I didn’t know his name at the time, but I had seen him around the village and knew what he looked like—wasn’t there. Only the boy, Bubber, covered with oil from an incredible car he had been working on. I suppose he saw me staring at it because he said, “Ain’t you never seen one like that?”

  I told him I hadn’t, then tried to describe what I wanted done to my American. Bubber wasn’t paying attention. “That’s a funny car there,” he said. “They uses ’em for drag races and shows and whatnot. Rears right up on his back wheels. Wait’ll I finish with him and I’ll show you.”

  I said, “I haven’t time. I just want to leave my car to be serviced.”

  That seemed to surprise him, and he looked at my American with interest. “Nice little thing,” he said, almost crooning.

  “I always see it has the best of care. Could you give me a lift home now? I’ll need my car back before eight tomorrow morning.”

  “I ain’t supposed to leave when Bosko ain’t here, but I’ll see if I can find one that runs.”

  Cars, some of them among the strangest I had ever seen, were parked on almost every square foot of the station’s apron. There was an American Legion parade car rebuilt to resemble a “forty and eight” boxcar, now rusting and rotting; a hulking candy-apple hot rod that looked usable, but which Bubber dismissed with, “Can’t get no rings for her, she’s overbored”; stunted little British minis with rickets; a Crosley, the first I had seen in ten years; a two-headed car with a hood, and I suppose an engine, at each end; and others I could not even put a name to. As we walked past the station for the second time in our search, I saw a sleek, black car inside and caught Bubber (soiling my fingers) by the sleeve. “How about that one? It looks ready to go.”

  Bubber shook his head positively and spat against the wall. “The Aston Martin? He’s too damn mean.”

  And so I drove home, eventually, in a sagging school bus which had been converted into a sort of camper and had WABASH FAMILY GOSPEL SINGERS painted in circus lettering on its side. I spent the evening explaining the thing to my wife and went to bed rather seriously worried about whether or not I would have my car back by eight as well as about what Bubber’s clothing would do to my upholstery.

  I need not have concerned myself as it turned out. I was awakened about three (according to the illuminated dial of my alarm clock) by the sound of an engine in my driveway, and when I looked out through the Venetian blinds, I saw my faithful little Rambler parked there. I went back to sleep with most of my anxiety gone, listening to those strange little moans a warm motor makes as it cools. It seems to me they lasted longer than normal that night, mingling with my dreams.

  Next morning I found a grimy yellow statement for twenty-five dollars on the front seat. Nothing was itemized; it simply read (when I finally deciphered the writing, which was atrocious) “for service.”

  As I mentioned above, I was leaving on a trip that morning, and I had no time to contest this absurd demand. I jammed it into the map compartment and contrived to forget it until I returned home a week later. Then I went to the station—Bosko was there, fortunately—and explained that there must have been some mistake. Bosko glanced at my bill and asked me agai
n, although I had just told him, what it was I had ordered done. “I wanted the oil changed and the chassis greased,” I repeated, “and the tank filled. You know, the car serviced.”

  I saw that that had somehow struck a nerve. Bosko froze for a moment, then smiled broadly and with a ceremonious gesture tore the yellow slip to bits which he allowed to sift through his fingers to the floor. “Bubber made a mistake, I guess, Colonel,” he said with what struck me as false bonhomie. “This one’s on the house. She behave okay while you had her out?”

  I was rattled at being called Colonel (I have found since that Bosko applies that honorific to all his customers) and could only nod. As a matter of fact the American’s performance had been quite flawless, the little car seeming, if anything, a bit more eager than usual.

  “Well, listen,” Bosko said, “you let me know if there’s any trouble at all with her. And like I said, this one’s on the house. We’d like your business.”

  My new card came, and I had almost forgotten this incident when my car began giving trouble in the mornings. I would start the engine as usual, and it would run for a few seconds, cough, and stop; and after this prove impossible to start again for ten or fifteen minutes. I took it to the station I usually patronize several times and they tinkered with it dutifully, but the next morning the same thing would occur. After this had been going on for three weeks or so, I remembered Bosko.