by Gene Wolfe
“If you can do that, I don’t understand why you didn’t do it back in the city. Why bring me here?”
“Do you ask why your surgeon wants to operate in a hospital? If he can do it, he could do it in your flat, couldn’t he?”
“So this is better.”
“It is. There are mountains, and then there are mountains. Have you been to Africa?”
“No.” She was hurrying after him.
“I have. To Egypt and the Sahara, and to the semidesert edges of the Sahara. Once I looked across a wide, dry landscape and saw bushes.”
“And?”
“Some of those bushes were bushes and some were ostriches. All mountains are stone. Most have no life. This one is alive. You won’t believe that, and I’m not going to prove it to you. But it is.”
“Wait up! Just a minute. Please!”
He did. “It is alive and sentient. It can speak, though it rarely does. It has a wife who lives in one of its many caves. She is — a laundress. Let’s leave it at that. She isn’t important, but he is. Important to us, here, tonight.”
“I’m starting to think you’re crazy, Dr. Chase. I — ”
“What is it?”
“I’m barefoot, and you’re not.”
“Yes. What are you getting at?” He had set down his canvas bag; as he spoke, he picked it up again.
“I felt the ground tremble. Not a lot, just a tiny tremor. They, do they have earthquakes up here?”
“You were born on this planet.” Gideon sounded angry. “You live on it, yet you know nothing about it. Antarctica is the only continent wholly free of earthquakes.”
“The mountain...”
“Didn’t like what you said. Correct. Have I told you that his wife is not the only thing that makes its home in his caves? She is not. Not by any means.”
Cassie gulped, still shaken. “Got it. I’ll shut up for now.”
“There’s an inn sign, the Silent Woman. Maybe I’ll take you there sometime.” Gideon looked back at her, smiling, and began to walk again.
Ten minutes later (or it may have been fifteen) she asked, “Does this get steeper?”
“Yes. Quite a bit steeper just before the summit. If you like, we’ll turn around and go back to the car.”
She shook her head. “I’m game if you are.”
“Barefoot.”
“Barefoot and bleeding. You can walk faster than I am, but you won’t walk farther.” She pointed. “Up there. Is that the top?”
“It is.”
“I — ” She gasped for breath. “Tell me about that flat rock.”
A dozen more steps carried Gideon to it. “It’s an altar. Are you afraid I’m about to sacrifice you on it? I’m not.”
Cassie caught up to him. “I can see where something’s been burned on it.” She sounded as if she were choking.
“Exactly.” Gideon zipped open his canvas bag and took out what appeared to be a bundle of pale sticks. He turned his back to her as he laid it on the altar. When he faced her again, a small fire blazed there.
“I don’t — I don’t even pray to God, Dr. Chase.”
“That is none of my affair.” Taking a jar from his bag he poured the thick liquid it contained on one side of the fire, letting the last drops fall into the fire itself.
Cassie sniffed and sniffed again. “I know that smell. Is it — ”
“It’s wild honey. You think I’m about to worship pagan deities. I am not, but there are certain persons with whom I wish to communicate. I’m preparing to do it. Now sit down — that high stone over there. I’ll sit on the low one facing you.” He sprinkled a powder on the flames, and the odor of honey was replaced by a new one, an odor pungent and sweet.
“Perfume?” Cassie had not yet taken her seat.
“Or incense. As you like.”
“I...” She coughed. “I wouldn’t want to wear that. It’s, well...”
“Sit down.” Gideon sat on a smaller stone facing hers.
“Dark.” She found that she was seated, although she had not intended to sit. “There’s a bitter undercurrent.”
“Correct. Be silent now and look at the moon, which is very beautiful indeed. I have a great deal to explain, and very little time in which to explain it.”
For a few seconds that might have been much longer, there was only the sighing of the night wind.
“The first thing I must explain is how badly you need sleep. Tonight you’ll have to take your part in the final performance of The Red Spot, and yours must be the greatest performance of your life. You’ve had very little sleep, and I’m sure you must be exhausted. I want you to sleep in the car as we drive home. You should sleep all morning, if you can. I know you must be very, very tired...” Behind him: great, dark wings.
The moonlight, Cassie reflected, streamed down upon this barren mountaintop as upon no place else on Earth.
CASSIE woke in her own bed, in her apartment. For a time that seemed terribly short, that fact did not trouble her in the least. She had returned from the theater, gone to bed, and had a strange dream.
Sometimes she had strange dreams. Didn’t everybody?
Dreams, in her experience, faded quickly. They became less real, less and less compelling, as she thought about them. This one seemed to solidify, like a jinni coalescing from lamp smoke. Before she finished brushing her teeth, her hands were trembling.
Her door was closed and locked, bolted and chained. Her windows were locked as well. The alarm was on. The dress she had worn home from the theater hung neatly in her closet. The warmer dress she had put on for the short walk to Baskin-Robbins hung neatly beside it. Its loden wool held a sweet and smoky aroma, with a bitter undercurrent.
Her white bra was in the clothes hamper. So, somewhat oddly, was a pair of taupe panty hose she recognized as her own; oddly because the feet hung in shreds.
The pictures! Suddenly, vividly, she remembered that the dark slender figure in her dream had handed her two photographs. She had peered at them in a bad light for a second or two, and put them in her purse.
They were there. She lay them on her coffee table: image-onlys of a middle-aged, clean-shaven man who wore glasses only in the full-length shot. “Soft face,” Cassie murmured. “Hard eyes. Big shoulders? Thick neck.”
She turned one over; someone had written on the back.
6′ 2″ About 240. Jogs. Often wears sports clothes, sunglasses. Watch is a cell phone. Former builder, diplomat. Blackmail, espionage, murder, alchemy???
Walks unseen
On the back of the other:
Up to something big. Find out what it is, Miss Casey. Be very careful.
She tapped Reis’s image, but heard only silence.
Sharon might be anywhere now, and was most likely out of the office on some assignment. Cassie dialed her cell phone.
“You have Sharon Bench.”
“It’s Cassie, Sharon. Can you talk?”
“Absolutely! How was Dr. Chase?”
Cassie paused, wrestling her uncertainty. “Weird. Much weirder than I expected. Sexy, and I hadn’t expected that either.”
“Did you... ?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Cassie. Come clean. I won’t print it.”
“I don’t know. There’s a — a vacancy, I mean. A blank spot. Things must have happened last night that I don’t remember. I thought it was all a dream at first.”
“Is this really Cassie? You don’t quite sound like her. Your voice is... I don’t know. Maybe you’re getting a cold.”
“Maybe I talked a lot last night and don’t remember it.”
“Like that, huh? Booze?”
“No. I had nothing to drink. Nothing to eat, either. I — I stuck a little pink plastic spoon in some sherbet once. I remember that. But it never made it to my mouth. Right now I’m hungry enough to bite off my own fingers.”
“Well, fix yourself something.”
“I’m going to Walker’s as soon as we hang up. I’m
going to order everything.”
“Not the apple thing. It would feed an army.”
“Dessert,” Cassie said firmly. She licked her lips. “Listen, Sharon. Can you meet me there? I’ll buy your lunch.”
“Maybe. When?”
“I’ll need forty minutes to get dressed and get there. Get a table if you get there first?”
“Maybe. Listen, Cassie. Do you remember my mother? You met her when she flew up from Florida.”
“Sure.”
“What’s her name?”
“First name? Martha. Martha Grossman.”
There was a long pause before Sharon said, “See you at Walker’s.”
WALKER’S served the world’s best omelets but made Cassie think of a cuckoo clock. Its windows were stained glass, and its roof was spiky with turrets. Its walls were, to be charitable, busy.
None of which were actually bad. That was left to the people waiting on chairs and benches. There were twenty at least, and some appeared to have been waiting there for quite a while.
Cassie approached the frazzled girl at the reception desk. “My friend may have gotten here first and gotten a table for us. Okay if I look?”
The girl’s mouth opened, then shut again.
“My age? Small, brown hair, big purse? Her name’s Sharon.”
“I — I know you,” the frazzled girl whispered. She sounded as if she had lost a lot of blood. “Only I c-can’t think of your name.”
Cassie gave it, although the frazzled girl did not seem to hear her.
“I’d better tell Ben.” She seemed to have come to some sort of decision. “I’ll go get him. May I have your autograph? While I’m gone, I mean.” She fumbled below the counter, at last producing a paper napkin. “It’s not for me! It’s for — for my sister.” She whirled and was gone.
Cassie borrowed a pen from a disconsolate man on a folding chair and wrote Cassie Casey, with all good wishes.
She had just returned the pen when the frazzled girl reappeared with a youngish man who wore a blue tie with a purple shirt.
“A pleasure, madam,” the youngish man said. “Your friend’s expecting you. Drinking coffee, you know. Said he wouldn’t order until you arrived. Please follow me.”
He? Cassie followed anyway, through one noisy room crowded with tables and redolent of good food and into another, this one equally redolent though smaller and not quite so crowded and noisy.
A slender, olive-skinned man sitting alone at a table set for three looked up from his menu as they approached. It was Gideon Chase.
THE UNSEEN AUDIENCE
“I’ve got just one question.” Cassie lowered her voice. “Who the hell gave you permission to tap my phone?”
Gideon almost smiled. “No one.”
“You — you slick little bastard! I thought we were friends.”
He nodded. “As did I. May I add that I haven’t tapped it?”
“You didn’t know I was coming here? This is pure coincidence? I don’t believe it.”
“I knew. I came here to meet you and Sharon Bench. May I explain?”
“It had better be good!”
“It will at least be truthful. This morning it struck me that you had called someone named Sharon as soon as you had read my note. Thus it was reasonable to suppose that you might call her again on awakening. When you two talked last night, you implied that she worked on a newspaper.”
Gideon paused, glancing back at his menu, until Cassie had nodded. It was a reluctant nod, but a nod nonetheless.
“Since you clearly knew her, it was also reasonable to assume that Sharon’s paper was local. Three newspapers are published here. You look surprised.”
“I am,” Cassie said.
“Two are quite small, and one of those is given away. As it happens I know — or at least I believe that I know — everyone who works on the other small one. Thus it seemed likely that Sharon was on the large one, the Sun-Tribunal. I called their offices and asked to speak with Sharon. The operator asked whether I wanted Sharon Wilks or Sharon Bench. Forced to guess, I said Sharon Wilks.”
Cassie grinned.
“When I had Sharon Wilks on the line, I explained that I was a friend of yours and that you had mentioned your friend Sharon in my hearing. Sharon Wilks told me she had never met you — though she knew who you were — and gave me a number for Sharon Bench. I called her, and she asked for an interview.”
Slowly, Cassie nodded. “Begged for one, I imagine.”
Pad in hand, a waitress cleared her throat.
“We’re waiting for the third member of our party,” Gideon explained.
“Go on,” Cassie said.
“I will.” He watched the waitress’s departing back. “Now then. I told Sharon I’d be happy to give her an interview on one condition. It was that she call me if you called her, and report what you’d said. To her credit she told me that she would not do so if she had agreed to keep your call confidential.”
“She didn’t. I never asked her to.”
“I’m glad to hear it. What do you think of the blueberry pancakes?”
“They’re dotty. She called you and told you I was meeting her here for lunch. Except it’s breakfast for me.”
“As for me,” Gideon said. “You’re correct of course. She told me you’d called and that you seemed different. Her word was spacey. She said you’d described me as weird and sexy.”
“That’s better than spacey.”
“I suppose, although I’d guess that I am both. She said you’d slept long, and that you had difficulty deciding which of your experiences had been mere dreams.”
“I didn’t say that. Or not exactly.”
“Newspapers are not notorious for their painstaking accuracy.”
Sharon came in, and after a moment Gideon waved. In a whisper he added, “Follow my leads and I’ll follow yours. For your life, don’t mention those pictures or the man in them.”
Cassie nodded almost imperceptibly as Sharon perched on the edge of a chair.
When they had put down their menus, Sharon looked from one to the other. “It seems like you two are an item.”
Gideon nodded. “We are.”
Cassie said, “Get real, Sharon. Just because I meet a man for breakfast...”
“Gee, it seems like only yesterday you were calling me to get a line on him. You’re a fast worker.”
Cassie smiled.
“That is beautiful! Wow! Can you smile like that for a picture?”
“I’ll try.” Cassie smiled again.
“Great! Put your hands under the table, both of you, like you’re holding hands.” Sharon’s purse had yielded a small camcorder. “Move your chair closer, Dr. Chase. That’s it!”
The camcorder lit.
“Let me move over just a trifle. Keep the smile.”
Sharon dropped to one knee.
Gideon raised his free hand in protest. “That’s enough, surely.”
“One more shot...”
After more footage taken from a new angle, Sharon sat again. “This is s-o-o-o great! I’ve got the lead already. Now where did you two go?”
The waitress reappeared. “Anybody want to order?”
When she had gone, Gideon said, “We went on a drive. I kept Miss Casey up most of the night, I’m afraid.”
“A drive where?”
Cassie said, “You wouldn’t know the place, Sharon, and it’s quite a ways from here anyway. It’s a sort of — of a scenic overlook.”
“I won’t pry.” Sharon grinned.
“But you’ll speculate.”
“Sure I will, I can’t help it.” The grin intensified. “This is going to be so big — ”
The waitress who had just left returned. “She’s a star, isn’t she?”
Gideon said, “Correct.”
“I knew it! I told the other girls, and they’re taking peeks. Nobody can think of her name.”
“Neither can I,” Gideon told the waitress firmly, “but I believe I ca
n recall the name of the manager here. Isn’t it Ben Janas? I seem to remember that.”
The waitress backed away.
Cassie whispered, “I thought you didn’t lie.”
“Of course I do.” Gideon’s tone was normal. “I’ve been mistaken for various things at various times, but never for a saint. Though I suppose they must lie, too, now and then. What I meant to say, and should have said, was that I could not think of you without feeling a trifle dizzy. You are, after all, the most desirable woman in the world. And I was, after all, holding hands with you just a moment ago.”
“Aren’t you going to turn on that tape recorder gadget you wear?” Cassie asked Sharon.
“She did,” Gideon said. “She turned it on as she came into the room. That’s how I knew she was Sharon. Did you drive here, by the way?”
Cassie shook her head. “I took a cab. I don’t have a car.”
“I do,” Gideon told her. “I have one here, I mean. Not the one we used last night. I’ll be happy to give you a lift when we’ve finished eating.”
LATER, in a small brown convertible with the top up, Cassie asked, “Is my phone tapped, by the way?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t tapped by me, if that’s what you mean. It’s possible that the man in those pictures has tapped it already, although it is not probable. What is, is that he’ll tap it soon.”
“I was thinking of your pet cop,” Cassie said.
“He may have, though I doubt it. I think it’s much more likely that he talked to Sharon Bench — or that Sharon talked to him.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Small white teeth nibbled at Cassie’s lower lip. “I didn’t know she knew him.”
“He’s a detective lieutenant and she’s a reporter. It would be surprising if they did not know each other. You called Sharon and asked about me. Didn’t it occur to you that when you had hung up Sharon might call others to try to get more information for you?”
“No. It should have. How did you get him to pick me up for you?”
“By telling him the truth. I told him that I thought I knew who had committed a crime he’s investigating. I named the man, and said that I was trying to locate him. As I am. I asked him to help me, promising to help him in return, as I have in the past. Do you want his name? I’m afraid I haven’t memorized his badge number.”
