A Borrowed Man

by Gene Wolfe

  You go in headfirst, and I saw one of his legs move just a little.

  15

  SOME ERRANDS IN NEW DELPHI

  You have already figured out that the piece of driftwood I sat on was the one I had hidden the book in, right? So I am not going to tell about that. Besides, it took me quite a while, and it is embarrassing to be that dumb. And, no, I did not take the rifle back into the mine. I brought it home to Earth and New America and stood it in a corner of my room. I guess I should have gone back to bed then, but I did not. For one thing, it was light outside already. For another, I was not sleepy. Just tired and starting to get hungry.

  So after I had shaved and finished sneering at this old face they have pinned on me (something I do every time I see myself in a mirror), I went downstairs and told the maid ’bot to make kafe, and talked to it about what the three of us might like for breakfast. I am a big fruit eater whenever there is good fruit to be eaten, so by the time Georges and Mahala came downstairs for breakfast I was eating peaches in cream and drinking kafe. Also running through all the stuff I wanted to get done. For one thing, I wanted to get an eephone.

  After Georges sat down, I said, “If you’ve got an eephone on you, they can find out exactly where you are, right?”

  He nodded slowly. “Mostly, yes. It depends.”

  “Tell me.”

  “If you get a regular one, you sign a contract and show identity and leave a thumbprint. Then they know who’s got that phone and what the number is. They can monitor any calls you make—that’s done on screens—and get a fix on the phone’s location. Your friend Colette had an eephone, right?”

  I nodded.

  “So if the cops started looking, they could find out where her phone was. No sweat.”

  It had been in our suite, in her shaping bag; but I just nodded again. Then I said, “Let’s say that I want one, but I don’t want anybody to use it to find me. How would I do that?”

  “Piece of cake. You go to any store that sells that kind of stuff and say you want a temp. They give you one—it’s free—and you have to pay for so many minutes, maybe a hundred or two hundred. Three hundred. Whatever; it depends on the store. The clerk shows you how to code it with your number. Are you thinking you’ll put somebody else’s number on there and get their calls?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s good, because you can’t. If you try, it’ll tell you to try again.”

  Mahala touched my arm and pointed to herself.

  “She means she can get on a screen and find you an unused number. It’ll be a lot quicker than you trying to find one on a phone.”

  I said, “How will people know to use that number if they want me? Will the screens have it? Is there a directory?”

  “They won’t, not unless you tell them. But once you call them, they’ll have the number.”

  I was thinking of watching mama monster come up out of the sea. “Suppose we went through into that world where we saw the scarecrows. Would an eephone still receive calls? Could I make calls from there? What do you think?”

  “I don’t think, I know,” Georges told me. “It would if we left the door open, but not if we shut it. And it wouldn’t matter whether it was locked or not. That door’s steel. Do you want your eephone to work in there? If you do, change doors. Take that one off the hinges and put in a polymer door or a wooden one. A steel door with a slot would work, too, but not solid metal, which is what we’ve got now.”

  “I see. What happens when I’ve used up my hundred minutes?”

  “You throw it away. At that point, your eephone’s junk. It can’t be loaded again.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. They used to make them reloadable, but some smart hackers figured out how to do it and make hundreds of free calls. So you can’t. Could you take one apart and use some of the parts to build your own eephone? Sure, if you were a genius—but you’d need some other parts, too. Maybe you could buy those. I don’t know.”

  Georges paused; when I did not ask another question, he said, “Suppose I wanted to know what you want an eephone for. Would you tell me?”

  “Yes, certainly.” I chewed and swallowed a chunk of fresh peach while I formulated my answer. “Here I can use Colette’s screens to make my calls, but I’m not going to be here forever.”

  “Right. Also you’re afraid the cops will be looking for you.”

  I smiled. “They and others. Those others will be looking for me already, I’m afraid. The police may be looking for me, too. I really can’t say. Let’s just say I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”

  Mahala held up her pad. NO MORE?

  I said, “If that means no more questions, no. If it means no more on that topic, yes. I’ve told you as much about it as I intend to.”

  She folded back the sheet. WHAT?

  “What should we talk about? What we plan to do today. I intend to buy one of those temporary eephones Georges told me about, for one thing. Another—which should probably have been the first—is to return the ground car Colette rented. My reasons for wanting to do that should be pretty obvious.”

  “She rented it just a few days ago,” Georges told me. “They don’t start looking until you’ve had one for two weeks.”

  I nodded like I had known that all along. “But the longer we keep it, the higher the bill will be, and if we find Colette, she’ll be stuck with that bill. I’d rather pay it myself and be done with it—that’s if there are ground cars in the garage here, and we can use those instead.”

  There were, and we could—a classy limo, a sleek red convertible, and a big alterrain. I told Georges that since he would be driving he could take whichever one he wanted, expecting him to choose the alterrain. He surprised me by picking the convertible.

  When he had driven it out of the garage and closed the door, I asked Maxette to take me to the nearest Ace agency, and it did. No sweat. I explained to a ’bot there that Colette had asked me to return her car, said to charge the account she had provided, and that was that. Mahala was riding in the front seat of the convertible with Georges, so I got in back.

  Getting my eephone was no trouble either. After that, I told Georges I wanted to talk to the housekeeper, Mahala screened her and told her we were coming, and off we went as smooth as wrap.

  While we were going there, I made up an eephone number using the birthday of the first me, and a few other numbers like that. (Strictly speaking, I personally was never born, so that seemed like the best way to do it.) The store’s clerk ’bot had showed me how to code my new eephone with my number; it was so easy that I could have worked it out myself in two or three minutes. I tried the number I had made up, and it was accepted—meaning that nobody had it already.

  The housekeeper had a little prefab on the south side of New Delphi, a pretty long drive. Later I found out that she’d been renting; when she’d worked for the Coldbrooks, she’d had one of the third-floor bedrooms.

  She was a middle-aged lady, kind of heavy, with smart eyes. Those eyes told me right off I was going to have to be careful and stick just as close to the truth as I could. Nothing fancy; they made me glad I had told Georges to keep a low profile.

  “Mrs. Peters? I’m Ern A. Smithe—that’s Smithe with a final e.”

  She smiled. She had a nice smile, and I was glad to see it. “Come right in, Mr. Smithe. I’m happy to see you. All of you come in, and please sit down.”

  I said, “This is my secretary, Ms. Levy. I believe you’ve already spoken with her.”

  That brought another smile. “Yes, indeed!”

  “And this is my associate, Mr. Fevre.” Everybody took a seat after that, Georges on the couch on my right, and Mahala in a chair to my left. The three of us made Mrs. Peters’s front room kind of crowded.

  “As I understand it, you’ve worked for the Coldbrooks in the past. Is that correct?”

  “I did, Mr. Smithe. For three years.”

  I nodded and smiled. “I’m afraid I’m going to have
a good many questions, Mrs. Peters. If you feel I’m becoming too intrusive, just say so and we’ll go.”

  She smiled back. “My life is an open book. That’s something my mother used to say, Mr. Smithe, and it means there’s not a single thing in there I’m ashamed of or afraid to talk about.”

  “Then let’s begin with Mr. Peters. Are you still married?”

  Her smile vanished. “In my heart, yes. Jim died six years ago. We had fifty-seven good years.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that. Most sincerely sorry. You have not remarried? You’re still a relatively young woman.”

  Mrs. Peters shook her head. “I doubt that I ever will, Mr. Smithe.”

  “Were there children?”

  She nodded. “Our daughters, Spring and Summer. Good girls, both of them—although Summer could get pretty hot, if you know what I mean. Spring’s a teacher now, just like dear Ms. Colette, down in Nuevo Dinero. Summer’s a surgeon now, if you can believe it. She’s up in Kokolik City, but she travels a bit. Going where they need heart surgery, you know.”

  “Both your girls have done very well for themselves, I would say.”

  “So would I, Mr. Smithe. I was a housemaid, back before they were born, and Jim was a gardener. From the beginning, we made it clear to them that we expected them to rise above our station, and they were going to have to make such fine grades that the government would keep them in school. At first we tutored them—that was reading and arithmetic, mostly—and later they tutored us. The years flew by and they did it, both of them.”

  I nodded some more and got down to business. “You mentioned Colette Coldbrook,” I said. “She’s not here at present. I’m a friend of hers who is acting for her. Perhaps my secretary told you about that?”

  “She said something about it, Mr. Smithe. I imagine Ms. Colette has mentioned me to you?”

  I ignored the question. “Did you and she get along well, Mrs. Peters? Would Colette be smiling if she were here? Assume that I’m utterly ignorant of whatever may have passed between you. Frankly, I don’t care whether you liked or disliked her; but I must know whether she liked you.”

  “We were friends, Mr. Smithe. You may not believe it, but we were. I knew my place, you understand, and I kept to it. But we chatted and gossiped as friends when the two of us were alone. She showed off her new clothes to me, and told me things in confidence about various people she knew.”

  “You said you worked for the Coldbrooks for three years.”

  For a moment I thought that Mrs. Peters was going to cry. “About that,” she said. “Yes. It seems, well, far away and bright now, Mr. Smithe. Something wonderful that happened a long, long time ago. Since Jim died…” Her voice trailed away.

  Mahala went over to stand beside her, patting her shoulder.

  I said, “I understand, believe me. Who hired you, originally?”

  She swallowed audibly. “It was Mr. Coldbrook, Senior. He engaged me because they needed—would you like me to explain the situation? How things stood in the family back then?”

  I said, “Please go ahead. It may save us quite a bit of time.”

  “Well, Mrs. Coldbrook had passed away not long ago. While she was still among the living the family had no servants, although they needed several in that big house and could afford good ones. Mrs. Coldbrook hadn’t wanted them, and Mr. Coldbrook had let her have her way. So Mrs. Coldbrook and Ms. Colette had taken care of the light housework, with the cleaning service coming in once every four weeks. Master Conrad had taken care of the ground cars, and there was a service—”

  “How many ground cars were there then? Do you remember?”

  “Certainly. There were two. One was a large sedan—quite the thing, if you know what I mean. Mr. Coldbrook, Senior, drove that one. Neither of the young people were allowed to touch it. The other one was a large alterrain. It was sturdy and reliable and could carry a lot. Both the young people could drive that; but it had a card, and I kept it. That was so I would know if it was gone and who had taken it. Where they had said they were going and so on. Then, too, once a week I drove it into town to buy groceries. I did all the grocery shopping.”

  “From what you’ve said, I take it there were other servants as well.”

  “Not at the time I was first employed, Mr. Smithe. Mr. Coldbrook had me interview maids and cooks—subject to his approval, you know. Eventually, we had two maids, a cook, and a scullery maid. I believe I interviewed for six weeks or so. Of course that wasn’t the only work I did. That was the easy work, because I could sit down to do it; but it’s terribly hard to find honest, hardworking girls these days. Of course the young men snatch them up. You know how that is.”

  I smiled and said, “I understand.”

  “The cook wasn’t hard at all, because Mr. Coldbrook was willing to pay a lot for a good one, and he interviewed them himself whenever he was at home. He traveled a lot on business. Perhaps you know about that.”

  I said I did.

  “Then he let the cook interview scullery maids because they were supposed to be her helpers. ‘Assistants’ is what we called them. That was at first, but Ms. Keck simply could not be satisfied; so after a lot of getting nowhere I had to do that, too.”

  Here I had Judy Peters name all the servants, with Georges taping the names and Mahala writing them down. I will not go through all that here. In the end, it did not matter.

  Probably I ought to tell you that I let Georges ask some questions then. His were mostly about whether any of them had an arrest record, who gambled, whom she thought might have used drugs, did Ms. Keck steal groceries, and so on. That sort of thing.

  Back to me now, when we were through with all that. “When you were discharged, Mrs. Peters, were you given a reason?”

  “We were assembled in the kitchen, Mr. Smithe. The maids, the cook and her assistant, the chauffeur, both the gardeners, and me. Mr. Coldbrook told us he had decided to go to an all-robotic staff. Everyone would be given a good character reference and a severance bonus. But we were to leave at the end of the week, all of us.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, let me think. Well, goodness! Week eighteen of last year I believe it was, Mr. Smithe. I know it was in the spring. One of the gardeners was terribly angry because—because—well now, I don’t suppose you care about any of this.”

  “Yes, I do.” I was trying to get her going. “Please tell me.”

  “His bulbs were starting to come up. He’d planted a lot the fall before. Five hundred, I think it was, and he wanted to see how it looked. They’re all gone, now. The ’bots took them out, I suppose.”

  “You went back to see?”

  “No. No, not really. I—well, I was looking for work, Mr. Smithe.”

  I smiled and said, “Nothing wrong with that, Mrs. Peters.”

  “One of the girls we’d had … her name’s Ella-Jean. She’d gone to work for Span & Spic. That the cleaning service they had. They hadn’t been in since Mister’d got the ’bots, only Master Conrad had told them to come again. So Ella-Jean told me about that. Mister’d gone away somewhere and Master Conrad thought he was dead. Only the law said he couldn’t be declared dead by a judge for years and years.”

  “I understand.”

  “But they thought he must be dead. Master Conrad did and Ms. Colette, too, she said. Everybody else that knew about it, the same. I talked about it to some others, you know, afterward. He’d been gone for half a year, and nobody had heard a word from him.”

  “You must have hoped you’d get your old position back.”

  “Yes, Mr. Smithe, I did. Well, Ms. Colette was off teaching. She’d gone, Master Conrad said, before Mister’d disappeared. That was how he talked, ‘disappeared.’ Only I know he thought he was dead. Everybody did. He hadn’t told Master Conrad he was going anywhere, or packed a bag, or taken a ground car or a flitter, or anything. I talked to one of those ’bots, too, while I was there. That was while I was waiting for Master Conrad to see me. He was
busy with something for an hour and over. I don’t know what it was. Probably that girl he was going to marry had screened him, or else he’d screened her.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, Master Conrad was just as nice as could be, when we talked, and what he said was the same as what the ’bot had told me. One morning Mister’d not come down for breakfast. Master Conrad thought he was working in his shop upstairs. He did that sometimes, and I would’ve thought the same thing most likely. Only after a while the cook ’bot wanted to know what he’d like for lunch, and Master Conrad went to see. And he wasn’t in there, or his room, either.”

  I nodded.

  “Master Conrad was very nice to me, Mr. Smithe, only no job. He was planning to get married and close the house. Sell it, only he couldn’t now under the law. It was Mister’s, you see. He promised he’d recommend me to people, only no job, like I said.”

  Georges asked, “What about his father? Did he ever come back?”

  “Yes, sir, he did after Master Conrad passed away. You know he died, I suppose.” Mrs. Peters looked from Georges to me.

  I said, “We know something about it, but not as much as we’d like to. What can you tell us?”

  “Somebody killed him is what they say. Those news reporters do, only they can’t be trusted, Mr. Smithe, the men or the women, either. They talk like they know a lot, but sometimes it’s all wrong.”

  I nodded.

  “Ms. Colette could tell you more, only I doubt she wants to talk about it. They were real close, her brother and her were. She told me once they’d fought like cats and dogs when they were little, and now they laughed about it and it was them against the world, you know.”

  “Against their father?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Smithe, though he was a hard man. Hard and quiet, you know. So quiet it would frighten you. Only when he talked you’d better listen, because he meant every word and he’d back it up. Those ’bots suited him just fine, I’m sure. I hope—well, I don’t suppose you want to hear my gossip.”