Storeys from the Old Hotel

by Gene Wolfe

  “Are you trying to say,” I asked, “that Dodson discovered some form of time travel?”

  “We all travel in time, Westing,” Street said gravely. “What Professor Dodson did—he had discovered, I may add parenthetically, that the basis for the discrimination to which Knight objected was physiological—was to bend his own perception of the four dimensions so that he apprehended verticality as we do duration, and duration as we do verticality.”

  “But that formula,” I began, “and the note itself—”

  “Once I understood Dodson’s plight,” Street explained, “the question was quantitative: How was vertical distance—as seen by ourselves—related to duration as perceived by Dodson? Fortunately Miss Dodson’s testimony provided the clue. You will remember that on the twelfth she had seen Dodson lying on a day bed, this being at approximately ten-thirty in the morning. On the eighteenth, six days later but at about the same time, she saw him on her chaise longue. A moment ago I measured your position, with you posed as the missing man had appeared, but I still did not know what portion of the body governed the temporal displacement. The third apparition, however, resolved that uncertainty. It took place seven days and two hours and ten minutes after the second. Dodson’s feet were actually lower this time than they had been in his first two appearances; his center of gravity was scarcely higher than it had been when he had half reclined on the chaise; but his head was considerably higher—enough to account nicely for the time lapse. Thus I located the ‘temporal determinant’—as I have been calling it to myself—in the area of the frontal lobes of the brain. When you were lying on the day bed, Westing, this spot was fifty centimeters from the floor; when you were in the chaise, seventy-four centimeters; and when you sat in the low chair, ninety-two and one half centimeters. From these figures an easy calculation showed that one centimeter equaled four hours of duration. Dodson himself arrived at the same figure, doubtless when he noted that the hands of that large clock on the wall appeared to jump when he moved his head. As a true scientist he expressed it in the pure cgs system: vertical displacement times fourteen thousand four hundred seconds per centimeter equals duration.”

  “And he wrote it on that slip of paper.”

  Street nodded. “At some time in our future, since if it had been in the past we could not have put the paper in motion, as we did, by setting up a fan in the present with assurances that it would remain in operation for some time. Doubtless he used one of the laboratory benches as an impromptu writing desk, and I have calculated that when he stood erect he was in November sixth.”

  “Where we will doubtless see him,” Wide said.

  “I think not.”

  “But, Street,” I interrupted, “why should that note have undergone the same dislocation?”

  “Why should other inanimate objects behave as they do? Unquestionably because they have been in contact with us, and there is, as far as we know, no natural opposing force which behaves as Dodson. There was, of course, some danger in grasping the note, but I counted on my own greater mass to wrench it from its unnatural space-time orientation. I had noted, you see, that Miss Dodson’s descriptions of her ‘father’ did not state that he was nude, something she would undoubtedly have commented on had that been the case—ergo, he could be said to bend his clothing into his own reference frame.”

  “But why did he vanish,” Miss Dodson demanded tearfully, “whenever he saw me?”

  “He did not vanish,” Street replied, “he simply stood up, and, standing, passed into November sixth, as I have already explained. The first time because he heard you call his name, the second because you startled him by dropping glassware, and the third time because, as a gentleman of the old school, he automatically rose when a woman entered the room. He doubtless realized later that he would reappear to you by taking his seat once more, but he was loath to frighten you, and hoped he could think his way out of his predicament; the hint he required for that I believe I have provided: you see, when I stood on my head just now I appeared to Dodson at about the time he suffered his unfortunate accident; the formula I have already quoted, plus the knowledge that Dodson had vanished thirteen days ago, allowed me to calculate that all I need do was to place my own ‘temporal determinant’—the area of my frontal lobes—fourteen centimeters above the floor.”

  “But where is he now?”

  Street shrugged. “I have no way of knowing, really. Obviously, he is not here. He might be at the opera or attending a seminar, but it seems most probable that he is in the apartment below us.” He raised his voice. “Professor! Professor Dodson, are you down there?”

  A moment later I saw a man of less than medium height, with white hair and a straggling yellow mustache, appear at the foot of the escalator. It was Professor Dodson! “What is it?” he asked testily. “Alice, who the hell are these people?”

  “Friends,” she sobbed. “Won’t you please come up? Mr. Street, is it all right if he comes up?”

  “It would be better,” Street said gently, “if you went down to him. He must pack for that trip to the seaside, you know.” While Miss Dodson was running down the escalator he called to the man below, “What project engages you at the moment, Professor?”

  Dodson looked irritated, but replied, “A monograph on the nature of pragmatic time, young man. I had a mysterious—” His mouth was stopped with kisses.

  Beside me St. Louis said softly, “Stay tuned for Ralph the Dancing Moose,” but I was perhaps the only one who heard him.

  Much later, when we were returning home on the monorail after Street had collected his fee from Wide, I said: “Street, there are several things I still don’t understand about that case. Was that girl Dodson’s daughter—or wasn’t she?”

  The rain drummed against the windows, and Street’s smile was a trifle bitter. “I don’t know why it is, Westing, that our society prefers disguising the love of elderly scientists as parenthood to regularizing it as marriage; but it does, and we must live and work in the world we find.”

  “May I ask one more question, Street?”

  “I suppose so.” My friend slouched wearily in his seat and pushed the deerstalker cap he always affected over his eyes. “Fire away, Westing.”

  “You told him to go down the escalator, but I don’t see how that could help him—he would have ended up, well, goodness knows where.”

  “When,” Street corrected me. “Goodness knows when. Actually I calculated it as July twenty-fourth, more or less.”

  “Well, I don’t see how that could have helped him. And wouldn’t we have seen him going down? I mean, when the top of his head reached the right level—”

  “We could,” Street answered sleepily. “I did. That was why I could speak so confidently. You didn’t because you were all looking at me, and I didn’t call your attention to it because I didn’t want to frighten Miss Dodson.”

  “But I still don’t see how his going down could have straightened out what you call his bend in orientation. He would just be downstairs sometime in July, and as helpless as ever.”

  “Downstairs,” Street said, “but not helpless. He called himself—in his lab upstairs—on the Tri-D-phone and told himself not to do it. Fortunately a man of Dodson’s age is generally wise enough to take his own advice. So you see, the bend was only a rubber bend after all; it was capable of being snapped back, and I snapped it.”

  “Street,” I said a few minutes later, “are you asleep?”

  “Not now I’m not.”

  “Street, is Wide’s real name—I mean, is it really Wide?”

  “I understand he is of Montenegrin manufacture, and it’s actually something unpronounceable; but he’s used Wide for years.”

  “The first time I was in his office—there was some correspondence on his desk, and one of the envelopes was addressed to Wolfe.”

  “That was intended for the author of this story,” Street said sleepily. “Don’t worry, Wide will forward it to him.”

  Westwind

&nb
sp; “ … to all of you, my dearly loved fellow countrymen. And most particularly—as ever—to my eyes, Westwind.”

  ONE WALL OF THE STEAMING, STINKING ROOM BEGAN TO WAVER, the magic portal that had opened upon a garden of almost inconceivable beauty beginning to mist and change. Fountains of marble waved like grass, and rose trees, whose flowery branches wore strands of pearl and diamond, faded to soft old valentines. The ruler’s chair turned to bronze, then to umber, and the ruler himself, fatherly and cunning, wise and unknowable, underwent a succession of transformations, becoming at first a picture, then a poster and at last a postage stamp.

  The lame old woman who ran the place turned the wall off and several people protested. “You heard what he said,” she told them. “You know your duty. Why do you have to listen to some simpleton from the Department of Truth say everything over in longer words and spread his spittle on it?”

  The protestors, having registered their postures, were silent. The old woman looked at the clock behind the tiny bar she served.

  “Game in twenty minutes,” she said. “Folks will be coming in then, rain or no rain, wanting drinks. You want some, you better get them now.”

  Only two did: hulking, dirty men who might have been of any dishonest trade. A few people were already discussing the coming game. A few others talked about the address they had just heard—not its content, which could not have meant much to most of them—but about the ruler and his garden, exchanging at hundredth hand bits of palace gossip of untold age. The door opened and the storm came in and a young man with it.

  He was tall and thin. He wore a raincoat that had soaked through and an old felt hat covered with a transparent plastic protection whose elastic had forced the hat’s splayed brim into a tight bell around his head. One side of the young man’s face was a blue scar; the old woman asked him what he wanted.

  “You have rooms,” he said.

  “Yes, we do. Very cheap, too. You ought to wear something over that.”

  “If it bothers you,” he said, “don’t look at it.”

  “You think I’ve got to rent to you?” She looked around at her customers, lining up support, should the young man with the scar decide to resent her remarks. “All I’ve got to do if you complain is say we’re full. You can walk to the police station then—it’s twenty blocks—and maybe they’ll let you sleep in a cell.”

  “I’d like a room and something to eat. What do you have?”

  “Ham sandwich,” she said. She named a price. “Your room—” She named another.

  “All right,” he said. “I’d like two sandwiches. And coffee.”

  “The room is only half if you share with somebody—if you want me to I can yell out and see if anybody wants to split.”

  “No.”

  She ripped the top from a can of coffee. The handle popped out and the contents began to steam. She gave it to him and said, “I guess they won’t take you in the other places, huh? With that face.”

  He turned away from her, sipping his coffee, looking the room over. The door by which he had just entered (water still streamed from his coat and he could feel it in his shoes, sucking and gurgling with his every movement) opened again and a blind girl came in.

  He saw that she was blind before he saw anything else about her. She wore black glasses, which on that impenetrable, rainwracked night would have been clue enough, and as she entered she looked (in the second most terrible and truest sense) at Nothing.

  The old woman asked, “Where did you come from?”

  “From the terminal,” the girl said. “I walked.” She carried a white cane, which she swung before her as she sidled toward the sound of the old woman.

  “I need a place to sleep,” the girl said.

  Her voice was clear and sweet and the young man decided that even before the rain had scrubbed her face she hadn’t worn makeup.

  He said, “You don’t want to stay here. I’ll call you a cab.”

  “I want to stay here,” the girl said in her clear voice. “I have to stay somewhere.”

  “I have a communicator,” the young man said. He opened his coat to show it to her—a black box with a speaker, keys and a tiny screen—then realized that he had made a fool of himself. Someone laughed.

  “They’re not running.”

  The old woman said, “What’s not running?”

  “The cabs. Or the buses. There’s high water in a lot of places all over the city and they’ve been shorting out. I have a communicator, too—” the blind girl touched her waist—“and the ruler made a speech just a few minutes ago. I listened to him as I walked and there was a newscast afterwards. But I knew anyway because a gentleman tried to call one for me from the terminal, but they wouldn’t come.”

  “You shouldn’t stay here,” the young man said.

  The old woman said, “I got a room if you want it—the only one left.”

  “I want it,” the girl told her.

  “You’ve got it. Wait a minute now—I’ve got to fix this fellow some sandwiches.”

  Someone swore at the old woman and said that the game was about to start.

  “Five minutes yet.” She took a piece of boiled ham from under the counter and put it between two slices of bread, then repeated the process.

  The young man said, “These look eatable. Not fancy, but eatable. Would you like to have one?”

  “I have a little money,” the blind girl said. “I can pay for my own.” And to the old woman: “I would like some coffee.”

  “How about a sandwich?”

  “I’m too tired to eat.”

  The door was opening almost constantly now as people from the surrounding tenements braved the storm and splashed in to watch the game. The old woman turned the wall on and they crowded near it, watching the pre-game warmup, practicing and perfecting the intentness they would use on the game itself. The scarred young man and the blind girl were edged away and found themselves nearest the door in a room now grown very silent save for the sound from the wall.

  The young man said, “This is really a bad place—you shouldn’t be here.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I don’t have much money,” he said. “It’s cheap.”

  “You don’t have a job?”

  “I was hurt in an accident. I’m well now, but they wouldn’t keep me on—they say I would frighten the others. I suppose I would.”

  “Isn’t there insurance for that?”

  “I wasn’t there long enough to qualify.”

  “I see,” she said. She raised her coffee carefully, holding it with both hands. He wanted to tell her that it was about to spill—she did not hold it quite straight—but dared not. Just as it was at the point of running over the edge it found her lips.

  “You listened to the ruler,” he said, “while you were walking in the storm. I like that.”

  “Did they listen here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t here. The wall was off when I came in.”

  “Everyone should,” she said. “He does his best for us.”

  The scarred young man nodded.

  “People won’t cooperate,” she said. “Don’t cooperate. Look at the crime problem—everyone complains about it, but it is the people themselves who commit the crimes. He tries to clean the air, the water, all for us—”

  “But they burn in the open whenever they think they won’t be caught,” the young man finished for her, “and throw filth in the rivers. The bosses live in luxury because of him, but they cheat on the standards whenever they can. He should destroy them.”

  “He loves them,” the girl said simply. “He loves everyone. When we say that it sounds like we’re saying he loves no one, but that’s not true. He loves everyone.”

  “Yes,” the scarred young man said after a moment, “but he loves Westwind the best. Loving everyone does not exclude loving someone more than others. Tonight he called Westwind ‘my eyes.’”

  “Westwind observes for him,” th
e girl said softly, “and reports. Do you think Westwind is someone very important?”

  “He is important,” the young man said, “because the ruler listens to him—and after all, it’s next to impossible for anyone else to get an audience. But I think you mean ‘does he look important to us?’ I don’t think so—he’s probably some very obscure person you’ve never heard of.”

  “I think you’re right,” she said.

  He was finishing his second sandwich and he nodded, then realized that she could not see him. She was pretty, he decided, in a slender way, not too tall, wore no rings. Her nails were unpainted, which made her hands look, to him, like a schoolgirl’s. He remembered watching the girls playing volley-ball when he had been in school—how he had ached for them. He said, “You should have stayed in the terminal tonight. I don’t think this is a safe place for you.”

  “Do the rooms lock?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen them.”

  “If they don’t I’ll put a chair under the knob or something. Move the furniture. At the terminal I tried to sleep on a bench—I didn’t want to walk here through all that rain, believe me. But every time I fell asleep I could feel someone’s hand on me—once I grabbed him, but he pulled away, I’m not very strong.”

  “Wasn’t anyone else there?”

  “Some men, but they were trying to sleep, too—of course it was one of them, and perhaps they were all doing it together. One of them told the others that if they didn’t let me alone he’d kill someone—that was when I left. I was afraid he wasn’t doing it—that somebody would be killed or at least that there would be a fight. He was the one who called about the cab for me. He said he’d pay.”