A Borrowed Man

by Gene Wolfe

  Surprised, she nodded.

  We had turned off the high road and onto a broad street lined with office buildings and shops; it was raining harder than ever, beating down on the roof of the bus. “I think I can promise food and a place to sleep,” I said. “I’ll do that, and do whatever I can for you both as long as you do what I ask. What do you say?”

  “That you’re the answer to a prayer.” Georges’s smile was real. “I speak for both of us.”

  In the terminal, I found a ’bot who didn’t seem to be busy. I explained that I needed the van from the shelter, and asked it to make the screen for me.

  “From the New Delphi Rest for the Needy? It is coming already, sir. Just go outside and wait under the awning.”

  “Someone’s already screened it?” I was surprised and I suppose it showed.

  The ’bot said, “It meets all the buses, sir. There is always someone.”

  Georges and Mahala joined me after I had stood under the awning for five minutes or so. Mahala had written THEY WILL PUT ME AWAY on her pad. I read it and told her I would see to it that they did not.

  Georges whispered, “We were hoping you’d stay in the station with us tonight.” His voice was almost lost in the drumming of the rain.

  I shook my head. “I promised you both I’d find you a better place to stay and get you some food. I will. Only I’m going to have to talk to the van’s driver first. Trust me.”

  Georges did not say anything to that; I could see he was wondering whether he should. Mahala printed WE DO on her pad. I nodded and gave her a sick smile, worrying the whole time that the van would be self-programming or the driver would be a ’bot.

  He was a human being, and he looked every bit as poor as Georges if not poorer. It was quite a relief. I got in, motioning for Georges and Mahala to stay right where they were. Smiling, I asked the driver, “Does this go to the shelter?”

  The driver said, “To the New Delphi Rest for the Needy. Only we’re about full up there.” He hesitated. “They might take the lady. I dunno.”

  “If they’re full, I’m surprised you came.”

  “For old people and kids. I’m supposed to bring those.”

  “Are you an employee of the Rest?” When he did not answer, I added, “Are you paid?”

  “That’s none of your business.” The driver sounded tired.

  “Actually, it is.” I was reaching into my pocket. “How much do they pay you?”

  “Why the hell do you care?”

  “Since you won’t tell me, I’ll have to guess. You live there now, and you offered to drive for them. You have a license, so your offer was accepted. Because you drive for them, they let you stay, feed you, and perhaps supply some clothing.”

  For a moment he stared at me. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

  “It is to me, because I was in a similar situation for several years.” I pulled out Colette’s money, which had been folded up in a pants pocket, and peeled off a twenty-five. “This will be yours if you’ll take us where we want to go.”

  He licked his lips. “Where’s that?”

  “The Coldbrook residence. I can’t tell you how to get there, but I assume this van has guidance.”

  The driver nodded and pushed a button. “The Coldbrook house.” He looked at me. “It’s a house, not a flat?”

  “Correct.” I waved for Georges and Mahala to get in.

  On the drive there, I thought hard, trying to make plans. There was nothing to see outside anyway, beyond the road and the rain. Georges would have resented it, I knew, if I had studied him the way I wanted to, or Mahala, or the two of them. Perhaps she would as well. From time to time I looked at them, though, and they were holding hands every time. Once they were looking at each other—staring into each other’s eyes. I do not think any of the plans I made ever worked out. I was going to do this and do that; but things changed and changed, and in the end, they did not. Perhaps I ought to have slept. That might have been more productive.

  A long drive between files of dripping trees led up to the house. There it branched, one branch looping, and the other leading off to the garage. We took the loop and stopped in front of the main entrance. There the three of us got out, and I gave the driver the twenty-five I had promised.

  Mahala showed me her pad: YOUR HOME?

  I shook my head. “Let’s get out of this.”

  There was a small porch or covered stoop, almost absurd on that towering house. When we were there and so out of the rain, I told them, “I don’t own this house or live here; it belongs to a friend of mine, but I have a card. She wouldn’t mind our staying here for a few days, and simply by being here and looking around—observing whatever there is here to see—I may be able to find out what’s happened to her. I may have to go into town as well.”

  Georges said, “She won’t mind us, either?”

  “When she learns you’re helping me, I’m sure she won’t.” I stopped for a minute there, thinking about the ground cars in the garage, and maybe the house was bugged, and half a dozen other things. “If I go into town, you’ll have to drive me.”

  The card I had taken from Colette’s shaping bag was in the breast pocket of my jacket. I took it out and waved it at the front door, which swung noiselessly open.

  Inside the house, I heard Colette speak, then scream.

  11

  A LONELY HOUSE IN THE RAIN

  We searched the house, naturally. Mahala wanted to go off on her own, but I had the gut feeling she would disappear and never come back. Maybe Georges felt the same way. He sided with me, telling her over and over that we ought to stay together. Which we did, first floor first, then second, then third, and by the fourth I saw it coming. Two doors were locked, and my card would not open either one of them. The door to what had clearly been Conrad Senior’s office and laboratory was not locked.

  Not so the others. Not either one of them. I tried to kick one open, and it was like kicking a neocrete wall. (I could tell because I had tried kicking a neocrete wall the night before.) Georges and I counted to three and hit it with our shoulders. Nothing. Naturally he wanted to know what was in there, and I had to tell him I did not have the faintest idea.

  After that we tried the other one, and it was the same thing all over again. We might as well have been trying to break open the door of a bank vault. The door looked like ponticwood, but it was really something one hell of a lot stronger.

  So we went downstairs and into the lounge and sat. We were all tired by then. I know I was tired enough to drop, and Mahala took her shoes off. Finally Georges said, “It’s pretty clear what happened. They heard us when we came in. This girl you told us about screamed—”

  “Colette Coldbrook.”

  “Thanks. She screamed and whoever it was who brought her here rushed her out the back door. It’s a big house and we were at the wrong end of it to hear their ground car. You say the garage is off to one side.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that’s where their ground car was. In the garage or parked in front of it. Didn’t you say something about flitters?”

  I dropped into a chair. “Yes. There were two in the hangar when I was here before. Colette and I came in hers. Presumably the other two belonged to her father and her brother.”

  “If the family had three flitters, there’s a landing spot.”

  I nodded again. “Yes. There was.”

  “So whoever it is that’s holding the girl may have a flitter, too. Maybe hers, maybe one of their own. If they do, they could be in Afasia before midnight.”

  Mahala showed me her tablet: IN HANGAR? When I had looked at it, she showed it to Georges.

  I said, “She’s right. They could be hiding in the hangar. Or in the barn or one of the other outbuildings. I know there’s a barn and a greenhouse as well as the hangar. There’s the garage, too; you just mentioned it. They could be in any one of those.”

  “Yeah, they could; but I think they’ve gone.” Georges sounded stubborn.

>   “If they have, we can’t possibly find them,” I told him. “But if they haven’t, we might. So I’m going to look. I’ll check out the barn first. You two can stay in here and stay dry if you want.”

  Georges said, “I’m tempted to stay and try to force one of those metal doors upstairs. Pry it open, if I can find some sort of tool in that lab.”

  “So am I. Come with me while I look in the hangar and the rest, and I’ll help you pry when we’ve searched them all.”

  “Later, maybe. All I really want to do is sit. No, go to bed. But you’re going in alone to make trouble for a bunch of kidnappers? You’ll be chopped meat.”

  It was still raining hard, and Georges and I ran as we went out the back door; then we saw something that stopped us dead. It was a ground car, parked in the rain at the back of the house. I tried to open a door, but it was locked. They were all locked. Georges told me that when you lock one, you lock them all. That was when Mahala caught up with us. I had thought she was not going to come; she may have thought the same thing.

  We were soaked to the skin by the time we got into the barn, and in there we found something else that stopped us dead, just like the ground car had; only this time it was something I should have expected. So call me stupid; I had not. And just in case you would prefer not to, should have should not make a spoonful of difference. There were five ’bots sitting around in there, four grimy gardeners and a shiny little maid with a white lace cap and a lace apron.

  “You are wet, sir,” the maid ’bot told me. “Allow me to take your jacket.”

  I shook my head.

  “I can hang it up in here, sir. This building is warm and dry. For the horses, sir, when the family had horses. When your jacket is dry, I will return it to you.”

  “Not now. There were intruders in the house. Did you know that? Any of you?”

  They all said no.

  “Our hostess, Colette Coldbrook, was there as well. You must have been aware of that.”

  The maid said, “I was, sir.”

  “They, and she, have left,” I said. “You’re a housemaid, I believe. What are you doing out here?”

  “My mistress told me to wait here until I was summoned, sir.”

  Of course I wanted to know why, but she had no idea.

  I told her, “We’re your mistress’s guests. We would like to contact her as soon as possible. Please keep that in mind, all of you. Will you do that?”

  The gardeners said, “Yes,” and the maid, “I will indeed, sir.” That was when I caught on that it was more verbal than they were. With ’bots, verbal always means smarter.

  “The intruders grabbed your mistress and made off with her,” I told them. “There’s a slim chance that they may be hiding in one of the outbuildings. I’m ordering you four”—I indicated the four gardeners—“to search all the buildings on the property except the house. We will be in the house. If you find the intruders, your mistress, or both, you are to screen the police immediately. Then come into the house and tell us. If you do not find them, you may return here. Is that clear?”

  It was not and I had to do some explaining, but I am going to skip all that. When they understood, I told the maid ’bot to come with us.

  When we had run through the rain and into the house through the back door, the maid offered to make us a simple supper. I had more questions for it by then, but I was too tired, too wet, and too hungry to turn a hot supper down. I said to go ahead, and to let us know as soon as the food was ready.

  “I am not a chef, sir. I hope you are aware of my shortcomings. My software permits the preparation of simple meals only.”

  “Soup and sandwiches?”

  “Yes, sir. Also certain salads and simple desserts. I believe we have the requisite ingredients here. Will those do?”

  Nodding, Mahala gripped Georges’s arm. He said, “Yes, for both of us.”

  When we had left the ’bot and gone into the sunroom, Georges asked, “Are we going to go upstairs and try to break in to those locked rooms?”

  I shook my head, and fell into one of the chairs around the largest table.

  Mahala looked a question.

  I gestured to them both to get them to sit down. “There’s maybe one chance in fifty that we could pry open one of those steel doors tonight,” I told her. “After that, maybe one chance in twenty that they’re actually in there. After that…”

  She was printing on her pad, so I shut up and let her do it. When she held it up, it read: THE CAR?

  I nodded. “The ground car would make it appear that they’re still here, I agree. It seems pretty doubtful, but we can’t write it off. That’s why I instructed the gardener ’bots to search the garage, the greenhouse, and the rest. It may not be their ground car, however. If it is theirs, they may have left by some other means. It’s possible they stole one of the flitters, for example. Or that another ground car came here to pick them up, and they abandoned the one we found because it was stolen. There are automatic cameras everywhere in every city, or so I understand. They image ground cars and check the images against reports of stolen vehicles.”

  Georges cleared his throat. “You’ve got to change their appearance in a way that will fool the screens that vet—”

  He stopped talking because I had held up my hand. I said, “Before you go on, I’d better warn you.” I was keeping my voice down. “There may be listening devices in this house. There may even be surveillance cameras. You were saying…?”

  “I … well, I used to know a ground car thief, and that’s what he told me.” Georges waited for some comment; when I had none, he said. “There are a lot of things you can do.”

  “I’m sure there are. I was going to finish by saying that if we could break through one of those doors tonight, which seems unlikely, and if they’re in there, which seems terribly unlikely, I’d say we’d have about one chance in a thousand of getting Colette away from them. When I saw them in Colette’s apartment—I don’t think I’ve told you about that.”

  “You haven’t,” Georges said, “and I’d like to hear about it.”

  “Later, perhaps. The point I wished to make was that when I saw them they had guns, which they drew as soon as they had entered. Pistols or handguns, or whatever you call them.”

  “Missile pistols?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know much about modern weapons, I’m afraid.”

  “Were the muzzles belled, flared like the end of a trumpet?”

  I tried to remember, to picture them. “Now that you mention it, I think perhaps they were. Slightly flared.”

  Georges leaned toward me. “Those were missile pistols. We civilians aren’t supposed to have them, but some of us do. They’re stolen from the military, or from the plants that make them.”

  I said, “I see.” I knew it sounded dumb, and I sure felt dumb when I said it.

  “When the missile’s fired, it’s traveling about three hundred meters a second. As soon as it leaves the muzzle, its own propellant starts burning, doubling or tripling its speed. When it hits you, it penetrates and explodes.”

  It was not easy to smile. “That sounds fatal.”

  “It is, in most cases. If you’re wondering about the belled muzzles, the bell is to keep the hot gases from the burning propellant away from your hands.”

  Maybe I nodded. If I said anything else then, I do not remember what it was.

  “You think our chances of getting this Colette away from the men who have taken her are a hundred to one. That’s even if we find them.”

  “Yes, I suppose I do. I just said so.”

  “Assuming you really believe that, why are we looking for them?”

  “Suppose they’d taken Mahala.”

  Georges clammed up for a while after that. Finally he said, “I see what you mean.”

  The maid ’bot announced supper, and we went into the dining room to get away from the drumming rain. The table was big enough for two football teams and a jury, but the three of us
sat together at the end nearest the kitchen. I asked the maid ’bot to have a seat and answer a few questions for me.

  “I would much prefer to stand, sir. I would not be comfortable sitting in the presence of humans.”

  I was tempted to tell it I was not one, but of course I could not do that without losing Georges and Mahala; either they would go, or Georges would start bossing me. So I told the ’bot it could stand if that was what it wanted to do, and asked who had bought it.

  “Mr. Coldbrook, sir.”

  “There were two of them,” I said. “Do you mean Conrad Coldbrook, Senior, or Conrad Coldbrook, Junior?”

  “Mr. Coldbrook, Senior, sir. He purchased me shortly before Mr. Coldbrook, Junior’s, death.”

  That jolted me. I shoved it back to think about later and said, “I’m surprised he didn’t hire human servants—a human maid and a few human gardeners. I’ve been told that he preferred those.”

  “My programming cautions against repeating anything I merely overhear, sir. However, Mr. Coldbrook, Senior, is no more.”

  “That’s correct.” I made it as firm as I could. “He is dead, and I would like to know exactly what it was you overheard.”

  “Mr. Coldbrook, Senior, told Ms. Coldbrook that we did not gossip or pry, sir. He was quite correct. We do not.”

  Georges asked, “What was it he was afraid you’d gossip about?”

  “Nothing, sir. He knew I did not gossip.”

  I tried, “Suppose that he had told you not to speak of something. What would that topic be?”

  “There was no topic about which I had been told not to speak, sir.”

  “That’s good. There’s nothing you know that you will not tell us. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Upon what topics do you wish to be informed, sir?”

  “Did you ever hear Mr. Coldbrook, Senior, instruct anyone else to be silent upon a certain topic?”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “Good. What was the topic, and whom did he caution not to speak of it?”

  “The topic was the death of Mr. Coldbrook, Junior, sir. Mr. Coldbrook, Senior, cautioned Ms. Coldbrook not to speak of it.”