The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction

by Gene Wolfe

  “No, I don’t—that’s what bothers me. That was the first thing I thought of—that it would be myself, perhaps the way I’m going to look when I’m older. I’ve lost a lot of my hair now and I could lose the rest of it; in fact, I suppose I will. And I could break a tooth in front and get a gold one—”

  “Maybe it wasn’t really a mole,” Edna said. “It could have been just a spot of dirt or something.”

  “It could have been.” He had seated himself again, and as he spoke he speared a bite of egg with his fork. “I suppose it’s even possible that I could grow a mole I don’t have now, and I could put on weight. But that wasn’t me; those weren’t my features, not at any age.”

  “Well, why should it be you?”

  “I just felt it should, somehow.”

  “You’ve been reading that red book.” Edna’s voice was accusing.

  “No, I haven’t even looked at it.” Curious, he pushed aside brown and purple pamphlets, fished the red book out of the pile, and looked at it. The cover was of leather and had been blind-tooled in a pattern of thin lines. Holding it at a slant to the light from the window, he decided he could discern, in the intricacies of the pattern, a group of men surrounding a winged being. “What is it?” he said.

  “It’s supposed to tell you how to be good, and how to live—everything like that.”

  He riffled the pages, and noted that the left side of the book—the back of each leaf—was printed in scarlet in a language he did not understand. The right side, printed in black, seemed by its arrangement on the page to be a translation.

  Of the nature of Death and the Dead we may enumerate twelve kinds. First there are those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second those who praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil. Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet streams with sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured. Sixth those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the Universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mothers’ wombs and in one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in their grandsons’ time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And last those who sleep.

  “Look at this,” he said. “This can’t be right.”

  “I wish you’d hurry. You’re going to be late.”

  He looked at the watch she had given him. It read 060.26.13, and he said, “I still have time. But look here—the black is supposed to say the same thing as the red, but look at how different they are: where it says: And last those who sleep, there’s a whole paragraph opposite it; and across from, Fourth those who amuse themselves . . . there are only two words.”

  “You don’t want any more coffee, do you?”

  He shook his head, laid down the red book, and picked up another; its title was Food Preparation in the Home. “That’s for me,” his wife said. “You wouldn’t be interested by that.”

  Contents

  Introduction—Three Meals a Day

  Preparing Breakfast

  Preparing Luncheon

  Preparing Supper

  Helpful Hints for Homemakers

  He set the book down again, and as he did so its cheap plastic cover popped open to the last page. At the bottom of the “Helpful Hints for Homemakers,” he read: Remember that if he does not go, you and your children will starve. He closed it and put the sugar bowl on top of it.

  “I wish you’d get going,” his wife said.

  He stood up. “I was just leaving. How do I get out?”

  She pointed to one of the doors, and said, “That’s the parlor. You go straight through that, and there’s another door that goes outside.”

  “And the car,” Forlesen said, more than half to himself, “will be around there under the window.” He slipped the blue How to Drive booklet into one of his pockets.

  The parlor was smaller than the bedroom, but because it held no furniture as large as the bed or the table it seemed nearly empty. There was an uncomfortable-looking, sofa against one wall, and two bowlegged chairs in corners; an umbrella stand and a dusty potted palm. The floor was covered by a dark, patterned rug and the walls by flowered paper. Four strides took him across the room; he opened another, larger and heavier door and stepped outside. A moment after he had closed the door he heard the bolt snick behind him; he tried to open it again, and found, as he had expected, that he was locked out.

  The house in which he seemed to have been born stood on a narrow street paved with asphalt. Only a two-foot concrete walkway separated it from the curb; there was no porch, and the doorway was at the same level as the walk, which had been stenciled at intervals of six feet or so with the words GO TO YOUR RIGHT—NOT TO YOUR LEFT. They were positioned in such a way as to be upside down to a person who had gone to the left. Forlesen went around the corner of his house instead and got into the yellow car—the instrument panel differed in several details from the one in the blue book. For a moment he considered rolling down the right window of the car to rap on the house window, but he felt sure that Edna would not come. He threw the reversing switch instead, wondering if he should not do something to bring the car to life first. It began to roll slowly backward at once; he guided it with the steering wheel, craning his neck to look over his shoulder.

  The narrow street seemed deserted. He switched into Front and touched the accelerator pedal with his foot; the car inched forward, picking up speed only slowly even when he pushed the pedal to the floor. The street was lined with small brick houses much like the one he had left; their curtains were drawn, and small cars like his own but of various colors were parked beside the houses. Signs stood on metal poles cast into the asphalt of the road, spaced just sufficiently far apart that each was out of sight of the next. They were diamond shaped, with black letters on an orange ground, and each read: HIDDEN DRIVES.

  His communicator said: “If you do not know how to reach your destination, press the button and ask.”

  He pressed the button and said, “I think I’m supposed to go to a place called Model Pattern Products.”

  “Correct. Your destination is 19000370 Plant Parkway, Highland Industrial Park. Turn right at the next light.”

  He was about to ask what was meant by the word light in this connotation when he saw that he was approaching an intersection and that over it, like a ceiling fixture unaccompanied by any ceiling, was suspended a rapidly blinking light which emitted at intervals of perhaps a quarter second alternating flashes of red and green. He turned to the right; the changing colors gave an illusion of jerky motion, belied by the smooth hum of the tires. The flickering brought a sensation of nausea, and for a moment he shut his eyes against it; then he felt the car nosing up, tilting under him. He opened his eyes and saw that the new street onto which he had turned was lifting beneath him, becoming, ahead, an airborne ribbon of pavement that traced a thin streak through the sky. Already he was higher than the tops of the trees. The roofs of the houses—little tarpaper things like the lids of boxes—were dwindling below. He thought of Edna in one of those boxes (he found he could not tell which one) cooking a meal for herself, perhaps smoothing the bed in which the two of them had slept, and knew, with that sudden insight which stands in relation to reason as reason does to instinct, that she would spend ours, most of whatever day there was, looking out the parlor window at the empty street; he found that he both pitied and envied her, and stopped the car with some vague thought of returning home and devising some plan by which they could either stay there together or go together to wherever it was he was being sent. “Model Pattern Products,” he said aloud. What was that?

  As though it were answering him the speaker said, “Why have you stopped? Do you require mechanical assistance?”

  “Wait a minute; I’m not sure if I do or not.” He got out of the car and walked to the low rail at the edge of the road and looked down. Something, he felt sure, must be supporting the mass of concrete and steel upon which he stood, but he could
not see what it was, only the houses and trees and the narrow asphalt streets below. The sunlight striking his face when he looked up again gave him an idea, and he hurried across the road and bent over the rail on the opposite side. There, as he had anticipated, the shadow of the road, long in the level morning sunshine, lay stretched across the roofs and streets. Under it, very closely spaced, were yet other shadows, but these were so broken by the irregular shapes upon which they were thrown by the sun that he could not be sure if they were the shadows of things actually straight or if the casters of these shadows (whatever they might be) were themselves bowed, twisted, and deformed.

  He was still studying the shadows when the humming sound of wheels drew his attention back to the flying roadway upon which he stood. A car, painted a metallic and yet peculiarly pleasing shade of blue, was speeding toward him.

  Unaccustomed to estimating the speeds of vehicles, he wondered for an instant whether or not he had time to recross the road and reach his own car again, and was torn between the fear of being run down if he tried and that of being pinned against the rail where he stood, should the blue car swerve too near. Then he realized that the blue car was slowing as it approached him—that he himself was, so to speak, its destination. Its door, he saw, was painted with a fantastic design, a mingling of fabulous beasts with plants and what appeared to be wholly abstract symbols.

  A man was seated in the blue car, and as Forlesen watched he leaned across the seat toward him, rolling down the window. “Hey, bud, what are you doing outside your car?”

  “I was looking over the railing,” Forlesen said. He indicated the sheer drop beside him. “I wanted to see how the road got up in the air like this.”

  “Get back in.”

  Forlesen was about to obey when in a remote corner of his field of vision he detected a movement, a shifting in that spot of ground below toward which he had been looking a moment before, and thus toward which (as is the habit of vision) his gaze was still to some degree drawn. He swung around to look at it, and the man in the blue car said again, “Get back in your car, bud.” And then: “I’m telling you, you better get back.”

  “Come here,” Forlesen said. “Look at this.” He heard the door of the other car open and assumed the driver was coming to join him, then felt something—it might have been the handlebar of a bicycle against which he had accidentally backed—prodding him in the spine, just above his belt. He moved away from it with his attention still riveted on the shadows below, but it followed him. He turned and saw that the driver had, as he had supposed, left the blue car, and that he wore a loose, broad-sleeved blue shirt with a metal badge pinned to the fabric off-center. Also that he wore no trousers, his sexual organs being effectively concealed by the length of the shirt, and that from under the shirt six or more plastic tubes led back to the blue car, some of the color of straw and others of the dark red color of blood; and that he held a pistol, and that it had been the muzzle of this pistol which he (Forlesen) had felt a moment before pressing against his back. “Get in there,” the man from the blue car said a third time.

  Forlesen said, “All right,” and did as he was told, but found (to his own very great surprise) that he was not frightened.

  When he was behind the wheel of his own car again, the man from the blue car reentered it, and (so it appeared to Forlesen) seemed to holster his gun beneath the car’s dashboard. “I’m back in my car now,” Forlesen said. “Can I tell you what it was I saw?”

  The man in the blue car said to his speaker, “This is two oh four twelve forty-three. Subject has returned to his vehicle. Repeat—subject has returned to his vehicle.”

  “Those pillars or columns or whatever they are that hold this road up—one of them moved, or at least its shadow did. I saw it.”

  The man in the blue car muttered something under his breath.

  “Are they falling down?” Forlesen asked. “Have you been noticing cracks?”

  The speaker in Forlesen’s car said, “Information received indicates an unauthorized stop. Continue toward your destination at once.” He noticed that the speaker in the blue car seemed to be talking to its driver as well, but Forlesen could not hear what was being said. After a moment (his own speaker had fallen silent) he heard the driver say, “Yes, ma’am. Over and out.” Then the pistol was aimed at Forlesen once more, this time at his face, through the window of the blue car. The driver said, “You roll that thing, bud, and you roll it now or I shoot.”

  Forlesen stepped on the accelerator, and his car began to move forward, slowly at first, then picking up speed until he felt sure it was traveling much faster than a man could run. In the mirror above the windshield Forlesen could see the blue car; it did not turn—as he had supposed it might—to follow him, but after a delay continued to descend the road he himself was going up.

  He had supposed that this road would lead him to Model Pattern Products (whatever that might be), but when he had been following it for some time it joined another similar but far wider, highway. There were now multiple lines of traffic all going in the same direction, and by traveling in the fast lane he could avoid looking over the side. It was a relief he accepted gratefully; he had a good head for heights, but he had found himself studying the long shadows of the supports whenever the twistings of the road put them on the side upon which he drove.

  With that distraction out of the way he discovered that he enjoyed driving, though the memory of the twisted columns remained in the back of his mind. Yet the performance of the yellow car was deeply satisfying: it sped to the top of the high, white, billowing undulations of the highway with a power slight yet sure, and descended in a way that made him almost believe himself a hawk—or the operator of some fantastic machine that could itself soar like a bird—or even such a winged being as had appeared on the cover of the red book. The clear sky, which lay now to the right and left of the highway as well as above it, promoted these fantasies, and its snowy clouds might almost have been other highways like the one on which he traveled—indeed, from time to time he seemed to see moving dots of color on them, as though cars like his own, but immensely remote, dashed over plains and precipices of vapor. He used the defecator and the urinal, dispensed himself a sparkling green beverage; the car was a cozy and secret place of retirement, a second body, his palace and his fortress; he imagined himself a mouse descending a clear stream in half an eggshell, the master of a comet enfolding a hollow world.

  He had been traveling in this way for a long while when he saw the hitchhiker. The man did not stand at the side of the road where Forlesen would have expected to see a pedestrian if, indeed, he had anticipated seeing any at all, but balanced himself on the high divider that separated the innermost lane from those on which traffic moved in the opposite direction. As he was some distance ahead, Forlesen was able to observe him for several minutes before reaching the point at which he stood.

  He appeared to be a tall man, much stooped; and despite the ludicrousness of his position, his attitude suggested a certain dignity. His hands and arms were in constant motion—not only as he sought to maintain his balance, but because he mimed to each car that passed his desire to ride, acting out in pantomime the car’s stopping, his haste to reach it, his opening the door and seating himself, his gratitude.

  Nor did he care, apparently, in which direction he rode. While Forlesen watched, he turned around and for a few moments sought to attract the attention of a passing vehicle on the opposite side; then, as though he realized that he was unlikely to have better fortune there than in the direction he had chosen originally, turned back again. His clothing was stiffly old-fashioned, once fairly good perhaps, but now worn and dusty. When Forlesen stopped before this scarecrow figure and motioned toward the seat beside him, the hitchhiker seemed so startled at having gotten a ride at last that Forlesen wondered if he was going to get in. Traffic zoomed and swirled around them like a summer storm.

  With his long legs folded high and the edge of the dashboard pressing again
st his shins he looked (Forlesen thought) like a cricket. An old cricket, for despite his agility and air of alertness the hitchhiker was old, his mouth full of crooked and stained old teeth and new white straight ones which were surely false, his bright, dark eyes surrounded by wrinkles, the hand he extended crook fingered and callused. “Name’s Abraham Beale.” Bad teeth in a good smile.

  “Emanuel Forlesen,” Forlesen said, taking the hand as he started the car rolling again. “Where are you going, Mr. Beale?”

  “Anywhere.” Beale was craning his neck to look out the small window in the back of the car. “Glad you didn’t get hit,” he said. “ ’Fraid you would.”

  “I’m sure they could see I had stopped,” Forlesen said, “and there are plenty of other lanes.”

  “Half of them’s asleep. More’n half. You’re awake, so I guess you thought everybody was, ain’t that right?”

  “They’re driving; I’d think they’d run off the road if they were sleeping.”

  Beale was dusting his high-crowned, battered old hat with his big hands, patting and brushing it gently as though it were a baby animal of some delicate and appealing kind, a young rabbit or a little coatimundi. “I could see them,” he said. “From where I was up there. Most of them didn’t even see me—off in cloudland somewheres.”

  “I’m going to Model Pattern Products,” Forlesen said.

  The older man shook his head, and, having finished with his hat, set it on one knee. “I already tried there,” he said, “nothin’ for me.” In a slightly lower voice, the voice of a man who is ashamed but feels he should not be, he added: “Lost my old job. I been trying to hook on somewhere else.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Forlesen found, somewhat to his surprise, that he was sorry. “What did you do?”

  “About everything. There ain’t much I can’t turn a hand to. By rights I’m a lawyer, but I’ve soldiered some and worked stock out west, and lumberjacked, and once I fired on the railroad. And I’m a pretty good reaper mechanic if I do say so myself.” Beale took a round tin box of snuff from one of the pockets of his shabby vest and put a pinch of the brown contents under his lip, then offered the box to Forlesen.