by Gene Wolfe
“Devilish good locks those are, Bill. Warren and Hardcastle? Best in the business.”
Cassie said, “She’s a woman, then. I thought so.”
Reis flushed, his big face — already sunburned — redder still. “We’ll call the doctor in before we’re through.”
“Fine. Then I want to know why King Kanoa doesn’t think she picked my lock.”
He adjusted his huge frame in his oversized chair. “Don’t seem likely, that’s all. Little bit of a thing, eh? Tallish for a Yank, but thin. Saw an expert try to pick a Warren and Hardcastle once. Rare book room. Librarian chap had locked himself in and shot himself. Body in there putrefyin’. He gave it up, eh? The expert chap. Ten minutes or so. Said it could be done but might take all afternoon. Drilled it out instead. Had a diamond-coated bit for the job, and needed it.”
Cassie nodded.
“Assassin would be on her knees out in the hall, with people goin’ up and down. Silly twit to try pickin’.”
Reis said, “Then how’d she get in, Kandy?”
“Walked in, I’d say. I talked to Iulani. I say that? Well, I did, and she aired out the room before Her Majesty retired. Open windows, open terrace door, eh? Let in the fresh air. Let in the assassin, too. Easy as pie, ’cause Hiapo here was watchin’ our queen and not her room. Little bit of a thing, dark clothes, hid in the shrubbery sneakin’ from terrace to terrace soon as the sun was down. Peeped into the room, saw Iulani was gone, and popped in through the door. Not just a bedroom, is it?”
Cassie shook her head. “There’s a bathroom and a — I don’t know what you call it. A little private sitting room with big windows. A room for getting dressed and having my hair done with lots of closets, and a kitchenette.”
“There you have it.” King Kanoa raised his hands as if presenting a tray. “Dozen places to hide. She hid in one and waited ’til you’d gone to sleep and things quieted down. Then out she popped, unlocked both doors, and had a talk.”
“I want to talk to her, this spy the Storm King sent here to threaten me.” Cassie turned toward Reis. “Can I, Wally? Please?”
He nodded. “Before dinner, if you want. But I want all four of us to talk to Dr. Schoonveld first.”
Cassie took a deep breath. “That’s great, but I want to talk to you, too — to talk to you for a long, long time when the two of us are alone.”
THE CITY UNDER THE SEA
“I will give you answers to the best of my ability,” Dr. Schoonveld said as he and Cassie left a warm bright terrace for a corridor redolent of antiseptics, a corridor that seemed filled with cool twilight. “My answers are not apt to be satisfactory. Of this I warn.”
“Why is that?”
“Let me repeat myself. It is because there are many things I do not know but wish to know. I have sent DNA to Amsterdam, but there is yet no report. This is one example of many.”
“I’ll start with an easy question, one nobody asked in the big meeting room or whatever you call it.” Much to her own surprise Cassie found herself wishing for a pencil and notepad. “What’s her name?”
“It is easy, Your Majesty. I do not know.”
“She won’t tell you?”
“She has told me half a dozen, none of which I credit. Most recent is Diana Diamond. Do you like it?”
Cassie shook her head. “Just for the record, I really am Cassie Casey. For lawyers it’s Cassiopeia Fiona Casey, but I’ve been called Cassie all my life.”
“You I credit. Perhaps I would credit Diana Diamond also, if so many others had not preceded it.”
“Is she really a woman, Doctor? You seemed doubtful in the meeting.”
“I am more than doubtful, but to speak of her we must call her one or the other. Woman is closer. There is no reason my opinion should interest you, but it is that she was once female and human.”
“He can do that? The Storm King can?”
Dr. Schoonveld shrugged. “There is one other patient that has asked of you. This is one of ours, a woman your husband sent to spy. Will you see her? Afterward?”
“If you want me to, yes.”
“Good.” (It was nearly goot.) “I want it.”
They had stopped before a door that appeared more solid than most. Dr. Schoonveld unlocked and opened it. “Alone you wish?”
“I don’t care.”
“Then I stand by.”
Cassie went in. The slender figure chained to the bed appeared asleep. Its face was less white than the sheet drawn up to its waist. Its free arm lay at its side; above it, a flask dripped pale yellowish fluid into its veins through a slender tube.
“Do you hear me?” Cassie asked. “I’ll keep talking until you wake and talk to me, but you’re not to sit up.”
Eyes too nearly colorless to be labeled “brown” or “blue” flew open. “That’s not exact, but you’re close.” The voice was dark still.
“I’m a quick study. Should I call you Diana?”
“I don’t care.”
“Then I will. You hunted me.”
“No...”
“Of course you did, you wanted to catch me. Now we’ve caught you. You people were all over Great Takanga and two or three other islands. That’s what I’ve heard.”
The figure in the bed said nothing.
“My husband came here and brought soldiers. They — ”
“Mercenaries...”
“You mean they were paid. Of course they were. They hunted you down and killed most of you. Isn’t that right?”
“Not all.”
“I said most. They also captured a few of your people who were badly wounded. Dr. Schoonveld here patched them up so they could be questioned. After that, they were shot. That’s what I was told.”
The wounded woman’s eyes were closed again; there was no sound but her breathing, and her breathing was scarcely audible.
“A friend told me once that my husband was a murderer. I think that’s probably what he meant. I understand why he did it, but I still don’t like it. So I’m offering you a deal. If you’ll cooperate with me and answer my questions fully and honestly, I’ll do everything I can to save your life. I can’t promise I’ll be able to, but I’ll try, and try hard. What do you say?”
There was a long silence. At last the quiet figure said, “He’s here. The doctor...”
“Yes. He is.”
“I’ll have to whisper. Bend down.”
Cassie did, and the still figure in the bed spat in her face.
THE saliva, thick and faintly green, was off Cassie’s face now, and that face had been thoroughly washed twice. “I still feel dirty,” she told Dr. Schoonveld as they sat at a small table in the lounge.
“I understand.”
She flipped open the red plastic compact she had bought at a chain drugstore in a time that now seemed infinitely remote. “She ever do that to you?”
“No.”
“I feel like somebody who started school in the fourth grade.” Cassie inspected her face in the compact’s powder-dusty mirror. “I know the advanced stuff, but I don’t know the basic stuff. How do I look?”
“Most lovely, Your Majesty. You are an astonishingly beautiful woman.”
“Thanks, but this mirror doesn’t believe you. I need eye makeup. It’s all gone, every bit of it.”
“Your eyes are most beautiful.”
“Thanks again, but you can’t see my eyelashes from a foot away.” She got out mascara. “She worships the Storm King?”
Dr. Schoonveld nodded.
“Why? Why would anyone want to? What draws them to him?”
“Three things.” Dr. Schoonveld pursed his lips. “Three at least. Three I know. First to be accepted and welcomed. They are outlanders, you see, those their own folk will not have. A man is born in China. Let us say this. His parents are Chinese. His brothers and sisters, also. Yet all look upon him and say, ‘This is not one of us.’ In your country and mine, the same. Once these were called changelings. For witches they are burned sometime
s. The Storm King welcomes them, and these qualities that make others say no, no! he treasures.”
Reluctantly, Cassie nodded.
“That is the first. Here is the second. They are made to feel a secret superiority, most strong. They are the masters of the hidden knowledge which turn the world. They have a friend — a patron — greater than any had by those who reject them. A queen? They spit in her face. What is a queen to them? What is any queen next to them? Dust and rubbish.”
“When I was a little girl” — Cassie spoke mostly to herself — “he said that pride was the greatest sin, but that I could be proud of good grades and new clothes, that there was no sin in that. I knew from what he said that there was another kind of pride, but I don’t think I ever really knew what it was...”
“It is that, Your Majesty. You are most correct. There is a third reason. Would you hear it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“They are given power. They may take life at their discretion. They are taught how to do it, how to do it without being taken. How to escape if they are taken. They are given a thousand comrades who will rescue them from any menace of law.”
“She hasn’t escaped.”
Dr. Schoonveld shrugged; he had an expressive shrug. “I advised His Majesty to cut off her feet, and when he would not I offered to do this. He would not permit it. Perhaps he was right, but I think me.”
“There must be some middle ground. I’ll talk to him.”
“That is good. Do you comprehend why the Storm King’s worshippers come?”
“No. He’s a monster. At least he sounds like one.”
“He is an immigrant from the farthest stars. He comes before the flood.” Dr. Schoonveld paused, and cleared his throat. “In all our history, we have found but one race of intelligence.”
“The Wolders?”
“This is correct. Many such have found us, however. Many have made Earth their home, though in small numbers always. Why do they not make themselves known to us?”
Cassie had finished work on her right eye and was starting on her left. “Because they’re intelligent, I suppose.”
Dr. Schoonveld smiled. “This is wise, what you say. Yet think. So many races, and all to the same conclusion? We think ourselves knowing, too. We find Woldercan, and a knowing folk there. We make ourselves known to them, and trade with them. We teach them, too, and learn from them. These things I have read. I have not been there.”
“Neither have I.”
“So. There is a difference. You agree, Your Majesty? We do not act there as others act here. Why?”
“You’re a lot smarter than I am, Doctor. You tell me.”
“I can say what I think. Only that.” Dr. Schoonveld paused to glance around the room. There was no one in it save themselves. “He is the difference. The Storm King. He comes first, before all the rest. He is mightier than they, so they fear him. We are his, his cattle, and have been his since we came to be. They live here as mice in his barn. He was here before the first man stood erect to look up at the Host of Heaven...”
“You’re afraid of him?” Cassie was studying her own eyes in her little mirror.
“Him I have never seen,” Dr. Schoonveld whispered. “But, yes. I am.”
“So am I.”
Dr. Schoonveld nodded. “You have more right than I. He has sent no one for me.”
“My husband sent a woman for him. That’s what you said.”
“Yes. She has come back to us, broken and ill.”
“Do you know what she found out?”
“That I do not.” Dr. Schoonveld shook his head. “I do not ask. It is not my affair. I am to make her well — if I can. My nurse told her you had come. She would wish to speak with you, I said I would bring you if I could. I cannot make you go.”
“I’ll go, of course. What can you tell me about her?”
“Only this little. For me, her name is Jane Doe. It is the name I have been told to use. She is young, only not a child. She was instructed — His Majesty has told me this. In California she was to enter into the Storm King’s circle. Have you been there?”
Nodding, Cassie opened her lipstick.
“Then you know. It is a place of strange beliefs. Spiritualists, Buddhists, pagans to prance naked beneath the full moon.” Briefly Dr. Schoonveld smiled.
“These do little harm, I think, but there are worse. There was a circle of fools to pay homage to the Storm King, but quite small. Also Satanists, and their groups became one. This was larger and grew quickly.”
“Sounds bad,” Cassie said.
“His Majesty wished to know who was there and what was planned. He found Jane Doe, who would see for him. One of our guards discovered her on the beach. He telephoned, and she was carried here. This is all I know.”
“She’s not talking?” Cassie inspected her lipstick in her little mirror.
“To me, no. To Izanami, more. To His Majesty, yes. To you more still, I think.”
“How do I look?”
“Beautiful. No man could resist you.”
“Thanks.” Cassie smiled. “Lipstick on my teeth?”
“No. None.”
“If she talks to me, I may not be able to tell you everything she told me.”
“This I understand, Your Majesty.”
Cassie rose. “But if she tells me anything that seems like it would help you treat her, you’ll get it.”
FOR a moment, the room seemed very different from the small, stark one in which the assassin lay; flowers will do that. Orchids and hibiscus, Cassie decided after studying the big bouquets. Orange blossoms, or something very like orange blossoms. Passion flowers? She tried to remember how passion flowers were supposed to look. Bougainvillea.
The woman in the bed lay upon her side, her face turned away from the door. A tall woman, Cassie thought, though the rangy body was hidden by a sheet and the long legs drawn up.
“Hello?” Cassie spoke softly. “I don’t want to disturb you, and if you’d rather not talk to me I’ll go. But the doctor said you wanted to see me.”
She sensed that the tall woman was awake, though there was no sound and no movement.
“I’m Cassie.”
Still nothing.
“I — I’m afraid I’m the queen here. Queen Cassiopeia, if you want to be formal.”
The tall woman rolled over. The eyes in her wasted face appeared large; their stare was hypnotic.
“I don’t know what happened to you, except that it was very bad. Whatever it was, I’m sure my husband didn’t intend for you to be so — so hurt.”
Slowly, the tall woman was sitting up. Long, bare legs slipped over the edge of the bed. The sheet was thrown back to reveal the usual inadequate hospital gown. White, in this case, with bloodless pink stripes.
“If you need some favor... Well, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do what I can.”
The tall woman stood, swaying, hands outstretched. Cassie took them, knowing somehow that it was what was asked.
And woke.
It had been only a dream, all of it. Her girlhood in San José, college, her work in the agency, the midnight meetings in strange places, and the strange visitors who sometimes appeared at those meetings.
There was only...
This.
This warm water, these bubbles spiraling slowly toward the surface with each breath she drew.
Less breath each time. Breaths more and more widely spaced. What was the value of breathing? Once she had known. Now she groped for the answer. Of what use was breath?
The world changed, silently, subtly, reversing as old-fashioned negatives are reversed. Light was darkness, and darkness light. Night lay below her, making dim her bright being with its starless self that was all shadow, the land of the murk-marred soul.
Above her the city shone, a city on the sun, its proud towers streaming with coruscant banners of holy vegetation that fluttered and snapped in crystal currents.
She removed her mask and the clumsy tan
k that held the air she did not need. They neither floated toward the city nor sunk toward the surface, but remained motionless where she had been. She herself made haste to meet those who made haste to meet her, angels too high and holy to serve any other god. They swarmed around her, larger — yet far smaller than she, kissing thighs and buttocks, sucking her ears and licking organs she had not known she possessed. Might she someday be as they?
Yes. He could do it. Would do it...
He was the city, and the city he, his supple arms wrapping this world, warm and knowing, subtly favoring those who served him.
As she had served him to betray him.
I have come to see him and speak with him. She spoke to herself and thus to those who swarmed about her, swarmed like buzzing blue-backed flies, like minnows, like graceful gray slugs come to devour the dead, like lions circling an elephant whose blood soaks the soil on which he stands, an elephant whose strength is of the past, kept standing by pride, by the inborn knowing. It was — it is — the true king. It is royal and will remain royal even as carrion.
“Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”
I have come that I may behold his face, and he mine.
Their reply came on the rush of the current. You may not enter, much as we love and hate you.
I must, or die.
Their laugher blew her upward, toward the city they denied her. Already you are dead.
She held her hands before her eyes. They were whiter than any chalk, hands molded of snow traced with blue — and that myriad who had swarmed her was no more. So soon as she no longer saw them, they were no more. She lowered her hands and swam, and they were back. She willed not to see them, willed as the man with the living beard, the six-fingered man, had taught her, had taught them all. Willed away, they were gone.
I am dead, bringing my bones to lay upon the heavens in tribute to him. This she spoke to herself, and thus to the keeper at the gate.
And you are... ?
Shalimar of the circle am I, Pat Gomez of Presidio Security, Patty Darling, Sweetheart, and Baby. All these.
The keeper of the gate remained erect; the gate bowed low. Enter!
