by Gene Wolfe
“If you intend affection, I believe she does. She likes me as a friend, as she might like a good book or a small dog.”
“You’ve never slept with her?” Payne was grinning, and I wanted to hit him.
“Of course not! We’ve never so much as kissed.”
“Too bad. She’s a rich woman, and she’s sure as shit going to be one hell of a lot richer soon. You know about the brother? You told us he’s dead, and that’s right; but do you know how he died?”
I said, “Colette told me he was murdered. Strangled, I believe.”
“Exactly. Choked to death by somebody with a lot bigger, stronger hands than she’s got. She’ll get what would have been his half of the old man’s money; but that’s held up, and it’s going to keep right on being held up until the brother’s murder’s solved. Did you know about that?”
I sipped my kafe. It was too strong but decent and still hot enough to keep all the yellow flowers blooming and spinning, but I hardly tasted it.
“Answer me, damn it!”
“Sorry. I hadn’t even considered the possibility, and it took me by surprise. No, officer, I did not know about it.”
“Well, that’s the way we do it now.” Payne rose and walked to the window. “Nobody profits by the crime until we find out who committed the crime. Did you ever meet the father?”
“Conrad Coldbrook, Senior?” I shook my head. “No, I did not. I never so much as knew he existed until Colette told me about him.”
“I didn’t know him either.” Payne sounded thoughtful. “Now I wish I had. Somebody said once that he could pull gold out of the air. He couldn’t, naturally, but I guess that was the way it seemed.”
“Colette told me that he was a financial genius,” I ventured.
“He was. It seemed like everything he touched made money. Naturally the trick was that he knew which ones to touch. Only where’d he get all his capital to start with? I don’t suppose you know?”
I did not want to tell any more lies than I had to, so I said, “Someone must know.”
Payne shrugged. “Sure, but who? Does Colette know?”
“I doubt it. Here I want to say that I’ll try to find out if you’ll free me, but someone has her. That’s how it looks, at least. She was abducted from our hotel suite. I suppose you know all about that.”
“Hell, no. All I know is that she’s disappeared. Tell me about it.”
“If you wish. I’ll make it as brief as I can. We went to Owenbright to question an academic, Dr. Roglich. It appeared that Colette’s father had consulted him several times and paid for his advice. Dr. Roglich was afraid that someone was spying on him, but he wouldn’t say who it was. I found a listening device concealed in a bookcase in his office, and I broke it.”
Fish asked, “What did you do with it after? Is it still there?”
“I doubt it. To the best of my memory, I dropped it into a wastebasket.”
Payne said, “You’d like to get Colette Coldbrook back, right? And free?”
“Of course. If that’s what you and Mr. Fish are doing, you may trust me to cooperate fully.”
“By answering my questions?”
“Certainly. I’d do that in any event. In every other way, as well.”
“Then answer this one. I know what Fish and I want with you. We want to find out about the Coldbrooks and about Colette especially. The rest are dead issues, see? She’s still alive, or we hope she is. What did she want with you?”
“I can tell you very readily, but I doubt you will believe me. She had a book, one that I had written. She thought there was a valuable secret concealed in it, and she wanted my help in learning it.”
Fish muttered something and moved closer.
“In a book you wrote.”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“What book is that?”
“Murder on Mars.”
“You put a secret in there?”
I shook my head. “Perhaps I did, but to the best of my knowledge I did not.”
Payne turned to Fish. “Get headquarters. Ask somebody there to dig up a copy for us. That’s Murder on Mars by E. A. Smithe. Smithe with an e on the end.”
He turned back to me. “That secret was in the book. Or anyway, she thought it was in there. What made her think that?”
“I can only guess. Her brother had given her the book. He may have said something to cause her to believe it held a significant secret. Or his behavior at the time may have implied it. You are the police. You and Fish—or at least I have come to believe you are.”
Payne shrugged. “Have I ever said so?”
“No, you have not.”
“How about placing you under arrest? Did I do that, or even say I might?”
“Of course not. Persons may be arrested. Taken into custody, and so on. I am a thing, an object, a library resource that you have obtained entirely legally.”
“You got it.” Payne looked around, presumably to see whether Fish was in earshot, then pulled up a chair. “You remember all that, see? All the stuff you just reeled off. This is Spice Grove, right? You know that?”
I nodded. “Certainly.”
“Well, Colette Coldbrook was a schoolteacher in a private school here, only a teacher with enough cash and connections to live in the Taos Towers. That’s very, very up-list. Flitters and furs.”
I nodded again.
“And somebody snatched her right out of that damned hotel in Owenbright. How do you think we feel about that? Not just Fish and me, but the whole force. How do you think the chief feels? How about the mayor? Those planet-size politicians in the Department of Enforcement up in Niagara? How do they feel?”
“You must find it unpleasant, I’m sure.”
“You bet we do. It’s macro-red. If you can tell me anything that might help, I’ll be your friend for life, and that’s no chad, see? So come clean. You’ve been answering exactly what I asked. You don’t have to admit it, I know it. Now just tell me something that might give us a little help.”
I said, “First allow me to deal with the way I have responded to your questions. Having no wish to be struck again, I speak exclusively of the subject at hand. When you give me liberty to wander, I may do so—though not far.”
“Wander all you want.” Payne straightened up. “How about some more kafe?”
I nodded. “With a trifle more sweetener this time, if you would be so kind.” I handed him my mug with its slowing yellow blossoms, and soon received it back restored to full bloom.
He sat in the chair he had pulled over. “Now talk. If it’s helpful to us, I’ll take anything.”
“It will anger you and perhaps frighten you, which I fear may be worse. But very well. Colette believed that there were listening devices hidden in her apartment. I don’t know why she believed that, but she did. After she checked me out, we went by hovercab to a ruined garden. I don’t know where it was, but the hovercab company will presumably have records.”
Payne nodded.
“We talked there for an hour or more. That was where she showed me Murder on Mars. She would not tell me what secret she hoped it contained, but we discussed several ways in which a secret might be concealed in a book. Do you want those?”
“No. Go on.”
“Eventually she screened our hovercab. It descended, picked us up, and took us to the Taos Towers. We intended to spend the night there and go to New Delphi the next day in her flitter, as eventually we did. We were seated in her lounge when a screen told us that someone was coming in, an A-1. I assume you know about that.”
“Sure,” Payne said. “They’re special guests, or else they’ve got a warrant.”
“I see. I ought to have thought of that. Well, the door of Colette’s apartment opened and two men came in. Their guns were of a type unfamiliar to me, but they were clearly guns. Soon they knocked me unconscious. When I regained consciousness, I was naked and had been tied to a chair. Colette was in the same condition.”
“She was naked, to
o?”
“Precisely.” I was growing weary of all the talk, but I tried not to let it show. “She said she had not been raped. I assume she told the truth. Certainly I have no reason to doubt her.”
“Had they robbed her? Taken her money and her jewelry?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. If they had, she never mentioned it.”
“Did she tell you what they wanted?”
I nodded. “She said that they wanted the book. I had hidden it before they came, however. Colette had been very concerned about listening devices—about being spied upon; so I had thought it prudent.”
“She didn’t tell them where it was.”
“She couldn’t. She didn’t know. I thought that was best. We reclaimed it before we left for New Delphi.” I waited for Payne to talk, but he didn’t.
Finally I said, “I have never been a policeman, but I did write more than twenty published mysteries; and it seems to me that the great question for us in this case is not who killed Colette’s brother, but who has kidnapped Colette. Colette’s brother is dead, and thus beyond our rescue. Colette herself may still be alive.”
Payne nodded. “To hell with the brother. He lived in New Delphi and he died there. Let them worry about him. Colette Coldbrook lived right here, and fifty or a hundred important people knew her. Pictures on the society sites, all that. Hell, I’ve followed so many links and watched so many interviews I feel like I knew her myself. She worked on the Charity Committee, she taught rich kids in that school, she was an eligible heiress. The works. We’ll be heroes if—”
Fish returned. Seeing Payne seated, he dropped into a chair himself. “No book. Nowhere. Nobody’s even heard of it. He’s stringin’ us.”
“I’m not,” I insisted. “There was such a book, and Colette Coldbrook had a copy, which she said had been given to her by her brother on the day he was killed. Take me to New Delphi, and I’ll retrieve it and show it to you. That is with the understanding that it is Colette’s, and must eventually be returned to her.”
“He’s stringin’ us,” Fish muttered.
I said, “If this is a subterfuge, it is one you will find remarkably easy to unmask. Take me there. Challenge me to produce the book. If I cannot, do whatever you think best.”
“That’s what we’ll do anyway,” Payne told me. “You’re showing a whole lot of guts, you are. You must be proud of yourself.”
“For this? No, not in the least. Are we going to New Delphi?”
Payne shook his head. “We can’t leave Spice Grove without the chief’s okay.”
“Which we’d never get for this dog shit,” Fish added.
I sighed. To tell the truth, I felt like crap on the carpet just then, but I tried not to let it show. “All right, I can solve your problem if you’ll let me. Buses must run between Spice Grove and New Delphi. I saw several big passenger buses on the road when I traveled here from Owenbright by truck. Let me have creds enough for a bus ticket. If you’ll do that, I’ll go to New Delphi, retrieve the book, and bring it back to you.”
My offer was refused, as I knew it would be. The refusal was followed by blows and burns, and a great many more questions, few of which I could answer in a way that satisfied my questioners.
Eventually, I was locked in a windowless room. It contained a narrow bed and a mattress without sheets or blankets. There was a stinking bucket in a corner. I pulled off my shoes, lay down, and went to sleep as fast as I ever have in my life. Maybe you think that’s impossible, but you have never been beaten or burned like I had been. I had nothing left. Hell, I had nothing left an hour before they quit.
I had a dream in there; I think it was just before I woke up. I was back in the stacks, and I pulled a book off a shelf and opened it. Arabella was in it and stepped from its pages as soon as I did. In real life, all her poetry books had been thin, but this was a thick, heavy book. I can still remember how heavy it felt. She kissed me, and we were on a beach. The little waves came up and washed our feet; and they were warm, really nice and warm. I put my arms around Arabella, and she was warm, too.
Then I reached out and got her book back and opened it again. She stepped back inside, and I shut it. The books were between palm trees, I think. In the shadows.
I got another book and opened that one, and Colette came out. She told me something I could not remember when I woke up, and I tried to make her go back into her book, but she kept struggling and struggling, sticking out arms and legs so I couldn’t close it properly.
Then I woke up.
It was still dark in my little room, but it had been dark when they put me in there. I found the door and groped the wall beside it. There was a switch there, but no light came on when I touched it; so I sat still for a while and listened. Pretty soon I could hear the wind outside. It was really faint, but I could hear it. Twice, I think it was, I heard a refrigerator purr. It would go for thirty seconds, maybe, then stop and be quiet for a long time.
The way I figured it, it was probably after midnight. Payne and Fish had gone back to the station and punched out, or whatever it is policemen do. They were in bed with their wives now, and sound asleep. Probably they had told their wives what a tough day it had been.
And they figured I could not break down the door or break down a wall. After the beating I had suffered, I would probably just lie down and groan. That is what they thought.
The outside wall would be the best of all if I could get through it, but I found out pretty quick that it was really bad. It seemed like neocrete. The wall across from the bed felt rock-solid the first time I kicked it. By the fifth kick I was feeling it bow. Pretty soon it made funny noises every time. I felt around, and little chunks of grainy stuff were falling out and hitting the floor.
The back of that was some kind of wire net. That was the toughest thing in there. It had been stapled onto the ponticwood uprights, and my fingers were bleeding before I got it loose. Once it was down, I kicked a hole through the rest of the wall in half a minute or less.
The next room was as dark as mine, but I found another switch, and when I touched it what I saw was an ordinary bedroom with two windows and two beds, a bureau, and a dresser. Probably I should have scouted around in there for something useful, but I did not. I just wanted to get out, to get away from the house before the ’bot came or I set off some kind of alarm.
So out the door and down a little hallway and from there into the kitchen. That had a back door. I went out fast and circled around the house to get onto the street and started walking.
10
ROAD TRIP
Let me say right off that when I got out I knew where I was going but at first I did not know why. It was the bus terminal, and as I walked, I figured it out. There were just two things I could do. I could go back to the library and tell the director how I had been mistreated. What would happen then, most likely, was the cops would send somebody new to take me out, probably a woman. She might say she was a cop, but probably not. Either way, I would have to go with her. It might not be as bad as before, but it might be worse, too.
The other way was for me to go overdue, find out who had Colette, and try to get her loose. Just thinking about that made me walk faster. As I saw it, that other way had a lot against it but a lot for it, too. Let me cover the against first.
It might get me killed. Murder is the most serious crime, and the people who do it are either pretty damned desperate or crazy; only killing me would not be murder, just destruction of property. They would probably have to pay for me; but maybe not, depending. None of which would help me one bit—I would be dead.
Here is the nasty one. I might get Colette killed. Back when the real me was still drinking coffee instead of kafe and writing mysteries, kidnappers did that sometimes. In a dirty way it made sense. The victim knew a lot about them by then, most likely. If they had to beat it, they would have to carry her with them, and she would be looking for help every chance she got. So smoke her.
Last one, and this one i
s easy. I might not be able to pull it off. Say they never got me, but I screwed up the whole thing. I would feel like shit and probably I would never get over it. I would doubt myself for the rest of my life, and I might even hate myself. I had never failed big-time up until now. Only I had never succeeded big-time either. Maybe I had been playing it safe, but what I really think is that I had never had a chance.
All right, this was it, my big chance. It was hero time.
So let’s get on to the good stuff. If you have been paying attention, you have seen the first one coming already. I would feel great about myself. Sure, I would still be a reclone, but I would know I was every bit as good as the original. Maybe better.
Second, Colette would be safe. I have put that one second, but it had to be the main thing, the grand prize. Maybe she would think I shit ice cream and maybe she would not; but we had been friends, Colette and me, this lovely fully human woman and a reclone; and I was the reclone. Heck, fully humans can be friends with a cat or a dog, right? Cool, I was the cat. She had fed me and taken care of me and one time put her arms around me, and even told me how great I was and how glad she was she had checked me out. Now it was Puss in Boots time, and Colette was the Marquis of Carabas. If I was half as good as she thought I was, I could pull it off.
Third, it would get Payne and Fish off my back. They were like the drunk looking under the streetlight for his wallet because the light was better there. Colette had been kidnapped in Owenbright and they were Spice Grove cops and could not look around in Owenbright. All they could do was work in Spice Grove and hope that she was there or they could turn up something that would help the Owenbright cops and turn the heat off. If you asked me, it was more likely she was in Owenbright. Only then a hunch hit me, and it hit me hard: she was in New Delphi!
Had to be! No wonder I had known I had to get to the bus station.
I mean, look at it. What was all this about, really? A whole lot of money Colette’s father had gotten from who knows where. Where was he when he did it? In New Delphi. That is where he and the family were living before he bought the big house outside town, and the big house was really in New Delphi, too. Where had the bad guys showed up first? In that big house outside New Delphi! That’s where they had murdered Colette’s brother. (All this is the way I was thinking then.) Where were the mystery rooms? In that same house, the big Coldbrook house in the country outside New Delphi!
