Castle of Days (1992) SSC

by Gene Wolfe

“Oh no. There’s several of us Sales guys, and some Advertising guys. Brought in to sharpen you up. That’s what we say.”

  “I’m sure we can use some sharpening.”

  “Well, anyway, I like it—this wheeling and dealing. You know what Sales is—you put pressure on the grocers. Tell them if they don’t stock the new items they’re going to get slow deliveries on the standard stuff, going to lose their discount. A guy doesn’t learn much financial management that way.”

  “Enough,” Forlesen said.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” The man with the mustache swallowed the remainder of his sandwich. “Listen, I got to be going; I’m about to clip some guy in there.”

  Forlesen said, “Good luck,” and walked away, hearing the door to the game room open and close behind him. He went past a number of offices, looking for his own, and up two flights of steps before he found someone who looked as though she could direct him, a sharp-nosed woman who wore glasses.

  “You’re looking at me funny,” the sharp-nosed woman said. She smiled with something of the expression of a blindfolded schoolteacher who has been made to bite a lemon at a Halloween party.

  “You remind me a great deal of someone I know,” Forlesen said, “Mrs. Frost.” As a matter of fact the woman looked exactly like Miss Fawn.

  The woman’s smile grew somewhat warmer. “Everyone says that. Actually we’re cousins—I’m Miss Fedd.”

  “Say something else.”

  “Do I talk like her too?”

  “No. I think I recognize your voice. This is going to sound rather silly, but when I came here—in the morning, I mean—my car talked to me. I hadn’t thought of it as a female voice, but it sounded just like you.”

  “It’s quite possible,” Miss Fedd said. “I used to be in Traffic, and I still fill in there at times.”

  “I never thought I’d meet you. I was the one who stopped and got out of his car.”

  “A lot of them do, but usually only once. What’s that you’re carrying?”

  “This?” Forlesen held up the brown book; his finger was still thrust between the pages. “A book. I’m afraid to read the ending.”

  “It’s the red book you’re supposed to be afraid to read the end of,” Miss Fedd told him. “It’s the opposite of a mystery—everyone stops before the revelations.”

  “I haven’t even read the beginning of that one,” Forlesen said. “Come to think of it, I haven’t read the beginning of this one either.”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about books here, not even when we haven’t anything to do. What was it you wanted?”

  “I’ve just been transferred into the division, and I was hoping you’d help me find my desk.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Forlesen. Emanuel Forlesen.”

  “Good. I was looking for you—you weren’t at your desk.”

  “No I wasn’t,” Forlesen said. “I was in the Bet-Your-Life room—well, not recently.”

  “I know. I looked there too. Mr. Frick wants to see you.”

  “Mr. Frick?”

  “Yes. He said to tell you he was planning to do this a bit later today, but he’s got to leave the office a little early. Come on.”

  Miss Fedd walked with short, mincing steps, but so rapidly that Forlesen was forced to trot to keep up. “Why does Mr. Frick want to see me?” He thought of the way he had cheated the man with the mustache, of the time he had baited Fairchild on the telephone, of other things.

  “I’m not supposed to tell,” Miss Fedd said. “This is Mr. Frick’s door.”

  “I know,” Forlesen told her. It was a large door—larger than the other doors in the building, and not painted to resemble metal. Mr. Frick’s plaque was of silver (or perhaps platinum), and had the single word Frick engraved in an almost too-tasteful script. A man Forlesen did not know walked past them as they stood before Mr. Frick’s tasteful plaque; the man wore a hat and carried a briefcase, and had a coat slung over his arm.

  “We’re emptying out a little already,” Miss Fedd said. “I’d go right in now if I were you—I think he wants to play golf before he goes home.”

  “Aren’t you going in with me?”

  “Of course not—he’s got a group in there already, and I have things to do. Don’t knock, just go in.”

  Forlesen opened the door. The room was very large and crowded; men in expensive suits stood smoking, holding drinks, knocking out their pipes in bronze ashtrays. The tables and the desk—yes, he told himself, there is a desk, a very large desk next to the window at one end, a desk shaped like the lid of a grand piano—the tables and the desk all of dark heavy tropical wood, the tables and the desk all littered with bronze trophies so that the whole room seemed of bronze and black wood and red wool. Several of the men looked at him, then toward the opposite end of the room, and he knew at once who Mr. Frick was: a bald man standing with his back to the room, rather heavy, Forlesen thought, and somewhat below average height. He made his way through the smokers and drink holders. “I’m Emanuel Forlesen.”

  “Oh, there you are.” Mr. Frick turned around. “Ernie Frick, Forlesen.” Mr. Frick had a wide, plump face, a mole over one eyebrow, and a gold tooth. Forlesen felt that he had seen him before.

  “We went to grade school together,” Mr. Frick said. “I bet you don’t remember me, do you?”

  Forlesen shook his head.

  “Well, I’ll be honest—I don’t think I would have remembered you; but I looked up your file while we were getting set for the ceremony. And now that I see you, by gosh, I do remember—I played prisoner’s base with you one day; you used to be able to run like anything.”

  “I wonder where I lost it,” Forlesen said. Mr. Frick and several of the men standing around him laughed, but Forlesen was thinking that he could not possibly be as old as Mr. Frick.

  “Say, that’s pretty good. You know, we must have started at about the same time. Well, some of us go up and some don’t, and I suppose you envy me, but let me tell you I envy you. It’s lonely at the top, the work is hard, and you can never set down the responsibility for a minute. You won’t believe it, but you’ve had the best of it.”

  “I don’t,” Forlesen said.

  “Well, anyway I’m tired—we’re all tired. Let’s get this over with so we can all go home.” Mr. Frick raised his voice to address the room at large. “Gentlemen, I asked you to come here because you have all been associated at one time or another, in one way or another, with this gentleman here, Mr. Forlesen, to whom I am very happy to present this token of his colleagues’ regard.”

  Someone handed Mr. Frick a box, and he handed it to Forlesen, who opened it while everyone clapped. It was a watch. “I didn’t know it was so late,” Forlesen said.

  Several people laughed; they were already filing out.

  “You’ve been playing Bet-Your-Life, haven’t you?” Mr. Frick said. “A fellow can spend more time at that than he thinks.”

  Forlesen nodded.

  “Say, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? There’s not much of it left anyhow.”

  Outside, others, who presumably had not been given the remainder of the day off by Mr. Frick, were straggling toward their cars. As Forlesen walked toward his, feeling as he did the stiffness and the pain in his legs, a bright, new car pulled onto the lot and a couple got out, the man a fresh-faced boy, really; the girl a working-class girl, meticulously made up and dressed, cheaply attractive and forlorn, like the models in the advertisements of third-rate dress shops. They went up the sidewalk hand in hand to kiss, Forlesen felt sure, in the time clock room, and separate, she going up the steps, he down. They would meet for coffee later, both uncomfortable, out of a sense of duty; meet for lunch in the cafeteria, he charging her meal to the paycheck he had not yet received.

  The yellow signs that lined the street read YIELD; orange and black machines were eating the houses just beyond the light. Forlesen pulled his car into his driveway, over the oil spot. A small man in a dark suit was sitti
ng on a wood and canvas folding stool beside his door, a black bag at his feet; Forlesen spoke to him but he did not answer. Forlesen shrugged and stepped inside.

  A tall young man stood beside a long, angular object that rested on a sort of trestle in the center of the parlor. “Look what we’ve got for you,” he said.

  Forlesen looked. It was exactly like the box his watch had come in, save that it was much larger: of red-brown wood that seemed almost black, lined with pinkish-white silk.

  “Want to try her out?” the young man said.

  “No, I don’t.” Forlesen had already guessed who the young man must be, and after a moment he added a question: “Where’s your mother?”

  “Busy,” the young man said. “You know how women are … Well, to tell the truth she doesn’t want to come in until it’s over. This lid is neat—watch.” He folded down half the lid. “Like a Dutch door.” He folded it up again. “Don’t you want to try it for size? I’m afraid it’s going to be tight around the shoulders, but it’s got a hell of a good engine.”

  “No,” Forlesen said, “I don’t want to try it out.” Something about the pinkish silk disgusted him. He bent over it to examine it more closely; and the young man took him by the hips and lifted him in as though he were a child, closing the lower half of the lid; it reached to his shirt pockets and effectively pinioned his arms. “Ha, ha,” Forlesen said.

  The young man sniffed. “You don’t think we’d bury you before you’re dead, do you? I just wanted you to try it out, and that was the easiest way. How do you like it?”

  “Get me out of this thing.”

  “In a minute. Is it comfortable? Is it a good fit? It’s costing us quite a bit, you know.”

  “Actually,” Forlesen said, “it’s more comfortable than I had foreseen. The bottom is only thinly padded, but I find the firmness helps my back.”

  “Good, that’s great. Now have you decided about the Explainer?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Didn’t you read your orientation? Everyone’s entitled to an Explainer—in whatever form he chooses—at the end of his life. He—”

  “It seems to me,” Forlesen interrupted, “that it would be more useful at the beginning.”

  “—may be a novelist, aged loremaster, National Hero, warlock, or actor.”

  “None of those sounds quite right for me,” Forlesen said.

  “Or a theologian, philosopher, priest, or doctor.”

  “I don’t think I like those either.”

  “Well, that’s the end of the menu as far as I know,” his son said. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll send him in and you can talk to him yourself; he’s right outside.”

  “That little fellow in the dark suit?” Forlesen asked. His son, whose head was thrust out the door already, paid no attention.

  After a moment the small man came in carrying his bag, and Forlesen’s son placed a chair close to the coffin for him and went into the bedroom. “Well, what’s it going to be,” the small man asked, “or is it going to be nothing?”

  “I don’t know,” Forlesen said. He was looking at the weave of the small man’s suit, the intertwining of the innumerable threads, and realizing that they constituted the universe in themselves, that they were serpents and worms and roots, the black tracks of forgotten rockets across a dark sky, the sine waves of the radiation of the cosmos. “I wish I could talk to my wife.”

  “Your wife is dead,” the small man said “The kid didn’t want to tell you. We got her laid out in the next room. What’ll it be? Doctor, priest, philosopher, theologian, actor, warlock, National Hero, aged loremaster, or novelist?”

  “I don’t know,” Forlesen said again. “I want to feel, you know, that this box is a bed—and yet a ship, a ship that will set me free. And yet … it’s been a strange life.”

  “You may have been oppressed by demons,” the small man said. “Or revived by unseen aliens who, landing on the Earth eons after the death of the last man, have sought to re-create the life of the twentieth century. Or it may be that there is a small pressure, exerted by a tumor in your brain.”

  “Those are the explanations?” Forlesen asked.

  “Those are some of them.”

  “I want to know if it’s meant anything,” Forlesen said. “If what I suffered—if it’s been worth it.”

  “No,” the little man said. “Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Maybe.”

  OPENING DAY

  An Article About Hunting

  As we had arranged earlier by vidphone, I met Mr. Roman Cowly in the lobby of the administration building of Federal Farm . Mr. Cowly, who has held the office of District Commissioner of Ecology since his appointment in 1982, is a tall, robust man of about fifty. He shook my hand cordially when I introduced myself. “Glad you could make it. So you feel that your readers will be interested in a closeup look at the science of wildlife management, do you?”

  I assured him I did.

  “Well, I think you’ll find our modern, scientific methods quite a revelation if you’re not already ‘up on them’ as we say. You understand,” he led me through the building as he spoke, having already introduced me to the Farm Manager, Mr. Swint, “we are not simply going to hunt any bear tomorrow. We will be ‘thinning out’ a particular one who has been doing a great deal of damage.”

  I assured him that I understood this, and ventured to ask him the purpose of the numerous low white-painted buildings I saw behind the farm’s main structure.

  “Those are poultry houses,” Mr. Swint, the farm manager, informed us. “Poultry and apples are the principal products of our farm here. We also raise a little corn for poultry feed—that’s what’s known as diversified farming.”

  I said, “Has the bear been killing the poultry?”

  “No,” said Mr. Swint, “he’s been after the apples.” He took us into the orchard and showed us several spots where the bear had been feeding on rotten apples that had dropped to the ground, and even in some cases biting at ripe apples while they still hung on the tree. “You wouldn’t think he could reach up that high and get them, would you?” Mr. Swint said, pulling down the remains of an apple for me to examine. “He’s a regular monster, this one.”

  The tracks, or “spore,” of the bear were considerably confused, but Commissioner Cowly was able to show me several clear prints and two places where the animal had vomited meals composed largely of half digested apples. “It’s the spray that does that,” Mr. Swint said. “Of course nobody ought to eat so many apples at one time, but you can’t tell a bear that.”

  I asked if he thought it was a grizzly bear.

  “No,” Commissioner Cowly explained, “we’re fairly certain this is simply the common black bear,” (Euarctos americanus) “and not a Grizzly.” (Ursus horribilis.) “Of course it could be the brown or ‘cinnamon’ color phase.” (Also E. americanus. Color distinctions are not rigidly enforced among American bears.)

  Mr. Swint explained that the grizzly bear was no longer found in this area, and I asked why this was so.

  “They had to be controlled because they killed sheep,” he explained. “Fortunately that could be done pretty easily because they went back to a dead sheep again and again until they had eaten the entire carcass. If you couldn’t find a sheep a bear had killed but knew bears were in the vicinity, you could shoot a couple yourself and put the poison in them.” He added that sheep had never done well in this locality and that he had none on the farm.

  In a section of the orchard close to the surrounding woods I was shown two pits being dug. One would hold the “marker”—as the man charged with the duty of “marking” the offending bear with an indelible luminous orange dye sprayed from an aerosol can is called—and the other myself. Because of the necessity of sawing and chopping through a number of large roots the work was proceeding slowly, but I was assured that it would be complete before nightfall. It had been my understanding that Commissioner Cowly himself was to be the “marker,” that night, but he
informed me that due to unexpected business he would be unable to join the hunt proper until next morning, and that Mr. Swint would take his place.

  While this was still under discussion we were interrupted by the sound of a truck stopping in front of the main building. This proved to be Mr. Alexander (“Sandy”) Banks, a Predator Control Agent of Commissioner Cowly’s, and the truck contained six of the commission’s best trained hunting dogs. These were “domiciled” in the back, which had been transformed into a sort of kennel with chickenwire. Mr. Banks had not been scheduled to put in an appearance until the next day, but had become confused about the nature of his orders—for which he was subjected to a bit of good-natured joshing from Commissioner Cowly, who was inclined to treat the error humorously no matter how often Banks explained it.

  Later I was shown the dogs Mr. Banks had brought, and Commissioner Cowly explained that such a pack was not simply flung together fortuitously. “Every animal you see there,” he explained, “is an expert, with his own particular function to perform in the pack. Sandy will show them to you if you like.”

  I was eager to see them, and “Sandy” accordingly pulled the dogs one by one from the truck so that I could examine them at close range.

  “This here is ‘Wanderer,’” he said as he led out the first animal, a sad and very dignified looking hound of more than ordinary stature. “You notice how I led him out first? That’s because he’s what we call the head dog or ‘boss’ dog. He’s part foxhound and a quarter coon dog and half bloodhound on his mother’s side.” When I stepped cautiously away from “Wanderer” Commissioner Cowly added, “You don’t have to be afraid of him; Wanderer’s a very gentle dog. If he were to catch this bear he’d just lick his face, wouldn’t he, ‘Sandy’?”

  “Sandy” nodded. “People don’t know it, but bloodhound blood’s the gentlest blood there is. We got Wanderer to hunt for kids that gets lost, and when he finds them he don’t do no more than lick their faces. He’s so gentle, is what we say, he squats to pee.” Sandy tied Wanderer to the bumper of the truck and drew out two hounds together. “These here’s ‘Nip’ and ‘Tuck,’ the twins,” he informed me. “Nip’s a bluetick, and ‘Tuck,’ he’s a redbone hound.” Nip and Tuck were duly tied to separate trees, where they howled softly until Mr. Swint quieted them with a rock.