Home Fires

by Gene Wolfe

  “But you don’t know?”

  “No.” Skip shook his head. “You’re quite correct. I don’t know.”

  “Here’s another one. Mother said that you said Rick couldn’t have been the one who stabbed her. So who did?”

  “Rick, almost certainly.”

  “You were lying?” Chelle sounded incredulous. “It could have gotten her killed.”

  “I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know he was the one. I still don’t, although I think it quite probable. When I said what I did, and when I outlined the evidence in his favor, I was trying to show him I didn’t suspect him.”

  Chelle was looking at a desert landscape, and Skip paused to admire her profile. “Do you want the honest truth?”

  She nodded.

  “All right. I was trying to persuade myself. I liked him and he had gone down into the hold to rescue you. I didn’t want it to be him. So I said he wouldn’t have had to use a steak knife because he had a license for a gun, and all the rest of that folderol.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t have, would he?”

  “If he had his gun on him—if he carried it when he had no reason to think he would need it. But he probably didn’t—most people don’t.”

  Chelle nodded reluctantly.

  “Just for the sake of argument, let’s say he did. A gun attracts a lot more attention than a knife. Guns have serial numbers, too. If he had left it at the scene—”

  “He wouldn’t. Nobody would.”

  “Then if he came under suspicion and was searched, it would be found on him.”

  “It would have been anyway, but the cops wouldn’t care. He had a license, and she’d been stabbed. You’re saying he was in the suicide ring?”

  Skip nodded. “Absolutely. Has it occurred to you that he may not have wanted to kill Virginia?”

  “Vannessa. Are you serious?”

  “Certainly. She was the senior member.”

  “Which meant the others were supposed to kill her.”

  “Correct, and Rick was a member. Suppose he didn’t want to die.”

  “Well, I thought…”

  “Rick was a spy. Entrée to a group like that could be useful to a spy; it would give him access to a selection of unbalanced people, pathetic individuals who could be easily manipulated by a clever operator.”

  “Like your secretary.”

  “Exactly. Rick had taken her to lunch, hoping to learn something about me that would lead him to you, and thus to whatever may remain of Jane Sims.”

  “You know about her.”

  “I do.”

  “I—well, I guess I didn’t want you to think I was crazy.”

  “You’re not,” Skip said, “and I know it. You came out of an explosion alive, but with a lot of damage. Some of that was brain damage, and the brain tissue you lost was replaced with a transplant from Jane Sims, who had been too badly hurt to live. They would have had brain scans, of course; presumably they uploaded those into somebody else who may go looking for Don Miles. Can we get back to Rick and Susan, or are we through with that?”

  “I still don’t think you’re making a lot of sense. I mean about not killing Mother. Are you saying he stabbed her just for fun?”

  “Not at all. For show. He needed to show Susan that he was a good member of the ring, but he didn’t want Virginia to die. She was their senior member, after all. Nobody would die until she did.”

  “Including him.”

  “Correct. Also including Susan, who seemed certain to be useful to him. He was trying to get his hands on you, and he didn’t know—either because Susan hadn’t told him, or because Susan herself didn’t know—that we had booked on the Rani.”

  “I see.” Chelle nodded. “We did that ourselves, online.”

  “Exactly. From that point on, we can guess pretty easily what they did, and my guess is that Susan did most of it. The news would’ve told her that Virginia survived. She must have gotten her address from the hospital; quite possibly she had my researcher do it for her. When they got to the apartment, they found it empty, no woman and no clothing. They searched it because Susan hoped to find something that would tell them where she had gone, but they found nothing.”

  “I’ve got a another question,” Chelle said. “Who planted the bomb?”

  “Susan, of course, acting on Rick’s orders; and I’ll get to that in a moment. Susan quit a few days after we sailed. It must have been a blow to his plans, but she still knew everyone in our office. Somebody told her our ship had been hijacked, and that Mick was recruiting people to rescue us. Rick and Susan joined. They would surely have done that separately; Rick was much too cagey to have them come in together. When they were on Soriano’s boat they would have pretended they were strangers who had just met.”

  “They acted like that on our boat, too.”

  “Correct. Finding Virginia on the Rani must have been a shock, to Rick particularly. But he wanted to get his hands on you, and wanted Susan to help him with it. To get her, he needed to prove that he was a loyal member of the suicide ring. He proved it by having her plant his bomb in the social director’s office—a bomb he detonated by broadcasting a signal when he knew Virginia wasn’t in there.”

  Chelle raised a graceful eyebrow. “Why’d he bring a bomb?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t know that he did. Perhaps the hijackers had one. Rick was down in the hold, too. He may have found a small bomb and decided it might be useful. Or he may have brought one—in imminent danger of capture, he could threaten to kill himself and hostages. He may merely have thought that a device that would permit him to kill while he was elsewhere was apt to be valuable.”

  “Okay if I ask why you’re not sitting down?”

  “I was hoping we’d take a look around. Living room, dining room … You know.”

  “Bedroom.”

  “Yes. There, too.”

  “Okay, we will. Only we’re in the living room now, so all you’ve got to do is turn your head.”

  He smiled. “I’d rather look at you. Besides, this is the reception room. It’s where our guests take off their coats and our housemaids hang them up. The living room is where the party is, there and perhaps in the family room and the entertainment center.”

  “No lounge?”

  “And the lounge. I forgot.”

  “The kids will be in the nursery, I suppose.”

  “Yes. Or the entertainment center.”

  Chelle nodded to herself. “You want kids?”

  “Yes, if you do. Do you?”

  “I don’t know.” She paused, staring out a window. “What about our round-the-world cruise?”

  “We’ll take it, but not until next year. They don’t want you to leave the country.”

  “I remember. Did you leave your gun on the ship?”

  “No. No to both.” The colorful sofa was wide, deep, and comfortable. “Are you asking about my pistol or the submachine gun?”

  “Either one, I guess—I’d forgotten about the subgun. Don’t tell me you tried to bring in that.”

  “I did not. I threw it over the side, but I kept my pistol.”

  “The pistol didn’t get you busted.”

  “Correct.”

  “Have you got it?”

  “Not yet. Achille was supposed to take it ashore for me.”

  Slowly, Chelle nodded. “If anybody could sneak it off the boat, he could.”

  Watching her, Skip decided that her inquiry was far from idle. He said, “He’ll have to sneak himself off. I thought that if he could do it, he could bring my gun—or both our guns—easily enough. Did you get your own gun ashore?”

  “Huh uh. I gave it to Charlie. He said he could do it. No problem.”

  “No doubt he was right.”

  “Only I don’t know where to contact him.” Chelle paused. “Do you know where he is?”

  Skip shook his head.

  “Do you know anybody who would know?”

  “Certainly. So do you.”

&nb
sp; “Give me a minute.…” Chelle looked thoughtful. “I got it! Mother.”

  “Excellent.”

  The lights flickered again.

  “You know where she is?”

  “No. I haven’t the least idea, and I’m not at all eager to find out.” Skip rose and opened a door. “What do I have to do to get you to look at our living room? From what I can see of it, it’s really quite beautiful.”

  “Answer my questions, that’s all. I want to know where my mother is. My biological mother. Let’s not get into the divorce thing.”

  Skip said, “I think we ought to call her Virginia Healy.”

  “That was on the boat.”

  “Yes. On the Rani—and here, too, if you’ll take my advice. There’s a company called Reanimation Incorporated. Have you heard of it?”

  Chelle shook her head.

  “I thought not. It probably didn’t exist when you went into space.”

  “Reanimation—you’re saying they bring the dead back to life.”

  “In a way, they do. Anytime anybody enters a hospital for a serious operation, he or she is given a brain scan. When things go wrong, the patient sometimes becomes brain-dead.”

  “That’s dead.” Chelle looked decidedly uncomfortable, stretching her long legs out before her and drawing them up again. “If you’re brain-dead, you’re dead.”

  Skip shook his head. “Legally, a person is not dead until he—or she—cannot be restored to life.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Not at all. You have life insurance. I know you do, because all soldiers get it.”

  “You’re right, I do. You’re my beneficiary. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “Let’s say that you were taken to a hospital—the reason doesn’t matter. While you were there your heart stopped. That triggered an alarm, and a therapy ’bot kept you breathing and shocked your heart into beating again. Let’s also say that I, your beneficiary, knowing what had occurred, then tried to claim your death benefit. No court would award it to me.”

  “I see. Because I’d been dead, but I was alive now.”

  “Exactly. Brain death means that thought has ceased. The patient is no longer conscious and will never return to consciousness spontaneously.”

  “Never wake up. I’ve got it.”

  Skip shook his head. “Thought doesn’t stop in sleep, it’s just that its character changes. Dreams are the most obvious example, but there are others. When a patient is brain-dead, no thought processes are occurring. None at all. There are medical techniques, however, that will sometimes return the brain to normal activity.”

  Chelle fidgeted. “Are we still talking about my mother?”

  “In a way, yes. I was explaining why the brain is scanned. When a previously dead brain is returned to activity, a great deal can be lost. Some memories are always gone, I’m told. Certain skills may be lost as well.”

  “Like, I might forget how to shoot?”

  “Exactly. A brain scan permits the physician to remedy that. The revived brain is wiped clean—all its information is nulled. The scan is uploaded in place of it.”

  “Do you know,” Chelle muttered, “I’m sorry we started talking about this.”

  “I’m not. It’s something I knew I’d have to tell you sooner or later, and I want to get out of the way.” Skip paused as if to study the off-white walls, the brightly patterned hangings, and the dark, stolid wood. “This was going to be our new home, Chelle. About thirty seconds ago, I realized that it won’t be. You and I, as a couple, will never live here.”

  She straightened up. “What the fuck are you saying?”

  “That I’ve always been a man who relied on reason, on logic, and on precedent; but there is a higher knowing, and sometimes it comes to me. You wanted to know where your biological mother is.”

  “Yes! I do!” Chelle’s hands clenched. “I do, and you’d better tell me.”

  “Very well. I will. Your biological mother is dead. She died, if I remember correctly, about five years after your leaving Earth. Presumably she is buried somewhere, though she may have been cremated. It shouldn’t be hard to find out.”

  Chelle stared without speaking.

  “You’d divorced her before you left; thus you weren’t notified.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “What Reanimation does is really pretty simple. It uploads a dead person’s last brain scan into the brain of a living volunteer.”

  “That—my mother…? That’s what she is?”

  “No, that is what Virginia Healy is. The package is costly. I paid to have it done because I wanted to make you happy; I hope you’ll take that into consideration.”

  “But she isn’t really my mother?” Chelle looked incredulous.

  “That’s a question for philosophers. She hasn’t lied to you about it, and you need to understand that. She believes that she is your mother, and in fact she’s as sure she’s Vanessa Hennessey as you are that you’re Chelle Sea Blue. Vanessa Hennessey’s memories are there, and so is her personality. The genetic heritage isn’t. Nor are the fingerprints. She couldn’t pass a retinal scan.”

  “You want me to call her Virginia Healy.”

  Skip nodded. “I suggest it.”

  “Do you know what her name was before all this?”

  “I do, but it would be nonsensical for anyone to use that name for her now. She wouldn’t even recognize it. Mentally, although not physically, she really is Vanessa Hennessey. Or at least, a very close approximation.”

  “And you are a complete and total bastard!”

  “For trying—”

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” Chelle was on her feet and raging. “I know everything you’re going to say, you sneaky son of a bitch! Shooting me full of dope would have made me happy, too, and by God it would have been cleaner!”

  The lights went out. Skip closed his eyes—but heard the door slam.

  * * *

  Later, after he had stacked Chelle’s luggage out by the elevator, he called his building manager. “I need the locks changed. Change them, and bring me up the new key-card.”

  “Just one card, sir?”

  “Yes, just one.” Skip hung up.

  His next call got an answering machine.

  His third, the call after that, was to his office. “This is Skip Grison, Boris. I gave the Z man a little job a few days ago. He was to check out a name I’d been given and find out whether there was any such person. I’ve called his office several times since, but there’s nobody there.”

  “I see…”

  “I don’t want you to start the same investigation, so I’m not going to give you that name. All I want is for you to look around for the Z man. He had a secretary, didn’t he? And a Girl Friday? Some kind of assistant?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, he did. Chrissie was the secretary. I think the other girl was Wendy something.”

  There was a pause.

  “Wendy Kaya. She was a criminology major just out of UCTI, but he said she was smarter than a good many people who’d been in the business for twenty years.”

  “Find Zygmunt if you can.” Skip’s fingers drummed the table. “Find those girls. The second should be better but either one of them. Get the story and get back to me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Boris paused. “There’s a man here who wants to see you. I know you told Dianne not to bother you today, but since you’re on the phone now, I thought I’d tell you. He … well, he doesn’t have hands, for one thing. He says he’s a friend of yours, but he won’t even give his name.”

  “I understand. I know him, and he is. Tell him to wait. Say I’ll be there in an hour and I’ll see him first. Is he carrying anything?”

  “Yes, sir. An old lunch bucket. I suppose it’s in case he gets hungry.”

  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 t
housand 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.