Home Fires

by Gene Wolfe

  Vanessa said, “You must have gone over that railing too, Richard. You were on deck with two empty pistols when I got there.”

  The captain nodded. “Thank you. That brings me to my point, and I didn’t know how I was going to get there. I’d never have gone over that railing if Mr. Grison hadn’t done it first. As it was, I followed him without thought and without hesitation. Are you—”

  As the captain spoke, the door opened. Achille looked in and made an odd, urgent gesture.

  Skip said, “We’ll be through in a moment.”

  When the door had shut, the captain said, “I was about to ask whether you were the leader of the passengers.”

  “No. I don’t think they have a leader.”

  Chelle said, “He is, Captain.”

  “That is my impression as well. Whether you’re their leader or not, Mr. Grison, I know you have influence and I want you to use it.”

  Soon after that, the meeting ended. The captain and Vanessa left together, going up the stairs to the signal deck. While Skip and Chelle made their way forward, she asked, “What do you think Achille wanted?”

  “I have no idea. Something was wrong with him. Did you notice?”

  “Sure. One side of his face was swollen.”

  “You’re right. He’d put a hook through the face of one of the hijackers, and they beat him for it. That’s not what I was getting at, though. I lost track of him when the shooting started, and he looks different now. It took me a moment to put my finger on it.”

  “Maybe he took a bath.”

  Skip was silent.

  When they had passed a dozen weary doors, Chelle asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To our stateroom. I thought Achille would be waiting outside. He wasn’t and I’d like to be where he can find me, at least for the next hour or two. I’ll probably go out on the veranda and read. What about you?”

  “Going down to the second-class bar. I just decided.” Grinning, Chelle raised her larger hand. “I swear I won’t have more than a couple of beers, and I won’t cheat on you. Trust me?”

  Skip nodded. “I love you too much not to.”

  “Okay. I need to talk to the guys and tell them to lay off the rough stuff until we get to that island he’s heading for.”

  “Grenada.”

  “Yeah, that was it. I’ll circulate and pass the word. Then I’ll come in and make you drop your book.”

  As he walked down the corridor to their cabin, Skip decided that he would read for no longer than one hour. If Chelle had not returned by then, he too would look in on the second-class bar.

  Achille was waiting outside the door. “We talk, mon. Mus’ talk. I got big news. Bad news.”

  Skip slipped his key card into the lock. “Come in. I’ve got a question, but I may not need to ask it after I hear your news.”

  Hesitantly, Achille followed him in. “Is good, I come in this place?”

  “You’re worried about Chelle. She isn’t here, and you’ll be gone before she comes back. You said you had news. What is it?”

  “They take me, los picaróns. Take my hooks.”

  Skip nodded. “I should have noticed that when you opened the door and waved to me. I knew something was wrong with the way you looked, but I didn’t know what it was. How did you open the door?”

  Achille grinned. “Roll him between arms, mon.” He demonstrated, one brawny forearm on top of an imaginary doorknob and the other below it. “This how I do him all days.”

  “I see. How did you get away from the hijackers?”

  “They let me go, mon. Take my hooks, I no fight then. Give paper and let go. I say I take to you. In pocket my shirt.” Lifting one shoulder and bending his head, Achille caught the top of a soiled note between his teeth.

  Skip took it. It proved to be a list of names, some printed, some cursive: David Arthur Pechter, Gregorio I. Lo Casale, Joe Bonham, Donald Miles, Gerald Kent-Jermyn, and Angel Mendoza.

  Achille pointed to the last. “Is gone, mon. He give slip before let me go. Him, him, him, him, him they still got. Rope on hands, feet, so they not give slip, too.”

  “These five men are their prisoners?”

  “Is so, mon. They give paper, make every mon write his name. They give me paper, say you come talk or they—” Achille made a throat-cutting gesture with the end of his right stump. “You come talk?”

  “Yes. Yes, certainly.”

  “No gun. No knife.”

  Skip nodded. “Chelle doesn’t have a laptop. I ought to have gotten her one.” A short search uncovered paper with the ship’s name and image blazoned on top, and a pen.

  Chelle, darling,

  The hijackers are holding some of our people, and Achille and I have gone to talk to them about it. Should they hold us, too, don’t try to free us before Grenada. I, who love you so desperately, will love you all the more for that.

  Skip

  A freight elevator in the stern carried them down to the hold, where two hijackers watched its doors. Skip displayed his empty hands, identified himself, and stepped out into what seemed a rocking warehouse filled with boxes and more stainless-steel drums—filled, too, with stale air and foggy yellow light.

  The hijacker who held an assault rifle told the one with a machete to tie Skip’s hands.

  “No!” He held up his hands again. “I’ve come to negotiate, not to surrender. There will be no negotiations as long as I’m bound.”

  “¡Puras vainas!” snapped the hijacker with the assault rifle, and Skip’s hands were bound. The hijacker with the machete marched him off between dark and beetling cliffs of barrels, crates, and boxes to a small, windowless office where an older hijacker took his feet off the desk and picked up a large knife. “You are no el capitán.” His English was accented but understandable.

  “Correct,” Skip said.

  “¿El jefe?”

  “I am the captain’s attorney.”

  The older hijacker grunted. “I will speak el capitán. No you.”

  “Untie me and send me back to him, and I will tell him so.”

  “One millón noras, we wish. One millón, and to be put a tierra.”

  “You want me to bargain with you, señor. I won’t do it until you untie me.”

  “You agree? You agree, I cut la cuerda.”

  “Cut the ropes, and we’ll talk about it.”

  For an instant, Skip thought that the older hijacker intended to stab him. The blow came, and for a time that might have been anything he thought absolutely nothing.

  When consciousness returned, he was being dragged by the feet into a dark place. There he lay, head aching and hands numb, for hours that seemed very long.

  REFLECTION 8: Negotiations

  Although I have often racked my brain for some means of softening up my opposite number, I never hit on this one. I will agree to anything, if only they will cut the ropes and let me go. They will do it, then start negotiating with the captain from a position of strength, insisting loudly and truthfully that I have already acceded to their demands.

  They will also have a fine opportunity to gauge my importance as a hostage; if an immediate rescue is mounted, my value is high. And so on.

  There may be such an attempt, ordered by Captain Kain. Or an unofficial attempt, headed by Chelle. Or no attempt at all.

  If I were the man I would like to be, I would hope for the last. I am not.

  The captain asked Vanessa to the meeting because of her assumed influence with Chelle. When I asked him why he had asked me, I expected him to say that I was Chelle’s contracto, and so on and so forth. That I too would have influence with her.

  He said nothing of the sort; thus he has sensed what I have: that we are drifting apart, despite all my efforts. She screwed Jerry—that’s how she would say it—not so much to strike at me (Chelle does not strike like that) as from simple boredom.

  Or the desire for a younger partner. She must find me as repellent as I find her attractive. Was Jerry the fifth man on Achi
lle’s list? If I were made to bet, yes.

  What can I do?

  Tied up here, lying helpless in the dark, nothing; but if she comes, if she rescues me, she is certain to value me more as the (aging) lover she saved.

  If.

  What will I do when she casts me aside? Vanessa would be far too costly. Too costly, and utterly, dangerously, unpredictable.

  Poor Susan will be out of the question. Someone who resembles Chelle? If I could find someone—which I doubt—it would be sure to end in disappointment.

  Reviewing my conversation with the man behind the desk … Just what went on when Achille was released? The man behind the desk protested that I was not the captain, as though he had expected the captain to come in person. Could he have been as naive as that? Absolutely not. He was a man of middle years, and the hijackers presumably chose him as their leader. Certainly they accept him as leader.

  Achille did not say he had been asked to fetch the captain. He said, in fact, that he had been told to take his paper to me. It was me they wanted. Me, specifically. The leader’s complaint must have been meant to disguise that; he had gotten the man he wanted, and did not want that man to know it.

  Why?

  All my life I have feared death; I think I could die now, gladly. I was afraid that the man behind the desk was about to stab me. Now I wish he had. Nothing. No more pain and no more sorrow. Oblivion.

  Unless there is indeed some existence for us when the bodies we have worn are carrion. Who would not like to believe that? Does my mother’s ghost hover around me? What does she think of the man I have become?

  She would forgive me everything. She always did. Why was it I never forgave her?

  The man behind the desk wanted me. For myself? That is at least possible. If it is true, I wish that he would begin to make use of me. Or that I would die, and deprive him of the pleasure.

  Everyone at the office assumes that I want Chet Burton to die. How I would despise myself if it were true! Chet, who took on an unproven young attorney? Chet, who taught me more than law school ever did?

  Would-be attorneys used to sit in court, hour after hour, day after day, and so learned the law. We could use an infusion of that, I think. A big one. Let each student of the law attend court for two years before taking the bar exam. Those who failed it then would fail because they knew more than their examiners.

  Boris knows more law than I do. He could pass the bar easily—if only they would let him take it. He knows more law, but he does not know courts, does not know the tricks of prosecutors, does not know the sympathies of juries, does not know the judges. He would have to learn those things. But he could.

  Would Boris try to get me out if he were here? Yes. I doubt that he would succeed, but I know him and he would try. What about Luis? Perhaps.

  What about Chelle? Chelle is here. Chelle counts. We are contracted, and I am rich. Chelle will be single, beautiful, and rich.

  She will not come. Why don’t I die?

  9. ACHILLE’S MIRACLE

  Skip was never sure afterward how long he lay in darkness. Perhaps he slept. Certainly he worried, and toward the end he prayed for death.

  Perhaps there had been furtive steps; if so, he had not heard them. Something was moving his arms, ever so slightly. Rats? Rats might be gnawing at his fingers; he would, most probably, feel nothing.

  There was a new odor, too—the stink of sour sweat? A new sound, soft grunts widely separated. And then the unmistakable sound of someone spitting.

  He turned his head, not far but as far as he could. The darkness was unbroken, and at last he said, “Who is it? Who is that, and what are you doing?”

  “My—” The speaker had been interrupted by the sound of gunfire, distant but unmistakable, echoing through the hold.

  Skip said, “Who’s shooting? Do you know?”

  (One more shot, alone, followed at once by a faint scream.)

  “I chew rope, mon. My name Achille.”

  “Thank God. There’s a penknife, fairly sharp, in my left-hand trouser pocket.”

  “I can no reach in, mon. For this they cut my hands.”

  Skip sighed. “And you couldn’t open it if you had it. I understand.”

  “I talk, no more chew.”

  Seeing the wisdom in that, Skip ventured no further questions. When the rope parted at last, he pulled his hands apart, rolled onto his back, and managed to sit up. His feet were still tied.

  “I rest mouth,” Achille said. “No more chew.”

  Skip nodded absently—a nod Achille could not have seen—and beat his hands against each other, hoping to restore them to life.

  Two shots, then a third.

  “You lady, mon. This I think.”

  “Chelle?”

  “Is so, mon. One mon give slip? He tell lady.”

  Somewhere nearby, an automatic weapon fired three short bursts.

  Skip was fumbling in his pocket with a hand whose pain was just short of excruciating. He found his knife, and managed to open it with his teeth. Some minutes afterward, he and Achille crept away, hiding in shadows from men who were too busy fighting to notice them.

  * * *

  Skip scarcely heard the captain; his mind was occupied with the captain’s audience, which he had counted. It was a motley group, a hundred and sixty-two crew members and seventy-four passengers—two hundred and thirty-six in all. The crew members were young and muscular for the most part, mostly male, brown, black, and white. Four fat men in snowy tunics were chefs; they looked resolute, but Skip wondered whether they would fight.

  “We were determined,” the captain said, “to avoid any showdown before we reached Grenada and had a chance to send the children and old people ashore. Then too, we hoped the Grenadan police…”

  The big woman in the middle of the room was a masseur; the captain had whispered it earlier. Skip tried to recall her name. Trinidad? Something like that.

  “This changes everything. Mr. Grison broke free with the help of this man, whom Mr. Grison had hired earlier as an interpreter.”

  The captain’s gesture indicated Achille, who raised an arm ending in a hooked and pointed device that might almost have been the head of a medieval weapon.

  “They had taken his prosthetics, by the way, but we’ve had a machinist fit him with substitutes that should enable him to fight.”

  Vanessa was fidgeting in the front row. The sleek little pistol Chelle had insisted on buying for her suited her perfectly, Skip decided: small and bright, with shiny pearl grips. She turned it over and over in her hands.

  “As many of you have heard, Mr. Grison succeeded in finding and freeing three of the men who had gone into the hold without authorization.”

  As he watched, Vanessa pushed back one of her long sleeves, revealing the spring holster he had nearly forgotten strapped over what seemed to be livid welts.

  “Two were too badly hurt to escape. The other three are with us here. Would you like to hear from them?”

  There was a chorus of nods and assents.

  “Then you shall. Sergeant Kent-Jermyn. Why don’t you go first?”

  The sergeant stood, a rangy man of thirty or so with high cheekbones and cropped brown hair. He clasped his hands behind him. “The captain’s putting me on the spot. That’s okay, I’ve got it coming. It was my show. I lined up the others, good soldiers who wanted to fight. Some are dead, or we think they are. Dave and Greg are going to die unless they get to a medic soon. We all had guns, and the enemy got them. That hurts worse than anything they did to me. I can’t speak for Joe and Don, but if you’re willing to go down there, I’ll go with you. With a gun if I can get one, with whatever I can find if I can’t.”

  Skip applauded as he sat down; within a second or two, everyone in the room was clapping and cheering.

  The captain raised his hands as soon as one or two people had stopped. “Private Bonham?”

  A stocky young man with a wide, cheerful face stood. “I’m no hero. I wanna say that fi
rst. Sure, I went down there and shot, and I think I got three. One for sure and two probables. Only when the sarge said we had to give up, I just thought my God I might get out of this alive yet.”

  He sat—and stood up at once. “What he said about fighting again, that goes for me, too. You’re going to need us. We know how to skirmish and you don’t, and now they’ve got Mastergunner Blue and how many more?”

  Skip said, “Seven ex-soldiers, men and women, went down with her. The hijackers say she’s still alive, and that four others are. We don’t have the other names.”

  “I got it, sir.” Bonham’s cheerful face was anything but cheerful. “They’ll rape her. Shit, they’ve raped her already, only there’s guys that don’t just wanna fuck. They wanna beat up on the girl. Biting—all that shit.” He paused to swallow. “I came on this boat hopin’ to get laid, sir, and I got it, too. Three times so far. Only I—well, I try to leave the girl happy, you know?”

  Skip nodded. “I understand perfectly.”

  Bonham sat again, and the captain said, “Have you anything to add, Corporal Miles?”

  He rose, taller than Bonham and serious-looking. His short, dark hair was beginning to thin at the temples. “Yes, sir. Quite a bit, I’m afraid. I’ll make it as quick as I can.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When I heard that Mastergunner Blue had come down trying to get us out … Sir, I wanted to go down right then. Just me, and I didn’t even have a gun. Sarge grabbed me and Joe helped hold me, or I would’ve done it. It was crazy, and they made me see that. But Mr. Grison here went down alone—”

  “Under a flag of truce,” Skip told him. “I went down hoping to negotiate their surrender.”

  “So maybe I could’ve done something. I don’t know. Most likely I’d just have gotten killed.”

  He coughed. “Nobody’s talked about tactics, so I’m going to. There’s three freight elevators go down there. There’s a couple ladders, too. I saw one when I was down there, and I talked to this lieutenant about an hour ago, Mr. Reuben. He said there are two, one forward and one aft so anybody down there can get out if the elevators lose power. There’s elevators forward, aft, and in the middle—amidships is how they say it. You can get maybe ten guys onto each elevator. Not much more than that.”