Storeys from the Old Hotel

by Gene Wolfe

  When he looked back at the pet, it had picked up a pointed stone and begun to scratch the boulder with laborious care, making something like a crude sine curve. When it saw he was watching, it repeated its hissing: “Sssst!”

  “No, that is not a word, that little drawing of yours. That is a picture, a picture of a reptile.”

  He thought of the horned beast again, this time not just one but a whole herd thundering across the plain below and lifting a plume of dust, as he had so often seen them. The pet fled in terror, its scream a keening that went on and on until he realized it was no longer the scream of the pet at all, but the soughing of the night wind along the face of the cliff.

  “I should eat,” he thought, and tried to keep out the question “Why?” There were the dead animals the pet had brought, some multicolored fruits, a root the pet had bitten to show that it was good. Such had been the pet’s original purpose. But as it had become better and better trained, there had, somehow, been less and less reason to eat, to eat anything.

  “The perfection of the means,” he thought, “the decay of the end.”

  He tried to study the cliff again, but it was too dark for him to see the top, where he had begun his message with his name-colony-name and a few sordid details about the flaw. He had planned to find the words, to put it all there, his love for the myriad others who had been his brother-sisters, his thoughts of Koneel, the circular marching of joy.

  The words would not come; they were fading like the light. “I have been lifted up by the pink flaw,” he thought, “the hand of the god. And set down the god knows where. Never, never to see you again, you beautiful ones.” Perhaps he should write that, but surely any who came to read would merely mock him. The characters for isolated and fool were the same, though reversed. On his side, the fool saw isolated. From theirs, the brother-sisters fool. The millions of minds his own mind had once touched, the countless intelligences he had nearly thought his own, were gone. He was a fool indeed, an isolated and empty one.

  He would write that, he thought; and in his mind’s eye, he saw the blazing characters blocking out the blazing stars. When he reached for his pen, his nerve—or rather, his energy—failed him.

  Daylight brought the pet again, very slowly, very carefully, a red fruit in one hand, a green one in the other.

  “Come, I will not hurt you.”

  The pet put down its fruit at its feet and groveled. To humor it, he picked up the red one and took a bite. The pet leaped up and capered with delight, and he did not bother to try to tell it that the fruit tasted like nothing, like air or dust. Or rather, that he could not taste it at all, that he no longer retained the urge to eat.

  The pet picked up a fragment of rock and scratched his boulder.

  “You will communicate with me yet. Of course you will.” He tried to applaud his own joke, but dry bits of fruit choked him and would not go down. Scratch, scratch—two drunken lines that leaned against each other, joined by a horizontal one.

  “Aaaah!”

  “Now what do you think you are doing?”

  The pet turned, capered, pawed the ground.

  “Very good, whatever it is, but what is it?”

  One finger stretched straight beside each ear, head tossing. “Aaaah!”

  “The lowering of the horned beast. I see, very good! But you have drawn him upsidedown.” He picked up his pen. “The horns should point up. Like this.” Straight lines joined at the bottom, joined again by a horizontal line. “Head, horns. You see?”

  The pet groveled once more, then rolled on its back, legs ludicrously lifted, stiff fingers touching the stones.

  “Dead. Yes, I understand now—the horned beasts are dead. Your god will not make them anymore.”

  Lips drawn away from teeth, the pet leaped up, seized its pointed rock, and began scratching the boulder again, making the sign larger, more perfect.

  “You are right, and wiser than I.” He had been trying to write in the wrong place. He had known it for so long, but now it could not be pushed away. He put the point of his pen to his head and began the first character.

  The pet did not hear the dry rustle of his fall or the silver rattle of his pen on the stones. It was drawing the dead bull, and drawing it made the pet feel strong.

  It thought (for it did think) of how it had done the bull dance for its god. And it imagined itself a great bull, a bull strong enough to push down the whole cliff, the cliff topped with the strange, angular lines that had once been of fire.

  A Criminal Proceeding

  TWO DAYS BEFORE EASTER SUNDAY, at eleven forty-three P.M., Stephen Brodie’s apartment door was broken down by a mixed force comprised of elements from the New York and Philadelphia police departments, the Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Narcotics, CBS, ABC, and the Washington Post. Brodie’s trial began approximately six months later, on November seventh.

  Perhaps because his was the first arrest to have been carried live on nation-wide television, public interest from the very beginning far exceeded anything known before. On the fifth, a late show host mentioned a rumor to the effect that the trial would begin in secret a day earlier than had been originally announced. Although he had quoted the report only to ridicule it, what he said proved sufficient to fill the street outside the Criminal Courts Building with a mob estimated by the police to contain eighty-four thousand persons, including many women and children.

  On the seventeenth, the selection of the jury began. Both the Prosecutor’s Office and Brodie’s attorneys were to have up to three hundred dismissals without cause, and an unlimited number of dismissals for cause. The jury—twelve jurors and fifteen alternates—would be chosen from a panel of five thousand persons. Since the names of all these were known to the public well in advance, it was inevitable that certain favorites should emerge, based upon previous familiarity, relationship to already well-known persons, appearance, or membership in a popular or notorious group. Time and Newsweek published their ideal rolls of twenty-seven as early as June, and the NBC computer, fresh from a triumph in the prediction of a presidential election, presented its own list of the fifty “most likely”—a list that in the event proved surprisingly inaccurate.

  The seventeenth was a Monday, and selection continued until the following Thursday without a juror being accepted, and, indeed without any popular favorite coming under consideration. At three-fourteen tension was mounting—H. Piper Davis, a building contractor whose remark that “Guilt or whatever would have to be determined by the law,” made some four months previously, had caught the attention of the media, was a mere two names off. At this moment, the selection of Emma Munson, a previously unnoticed black Baptist mother’s helper struck the courtroom like a meteor. “No objection,” stated K.B. Parker, the assistant prosecutor. When Will (Scooter) Clark, the defense attorney said—in place of the universally anticipated “objection for cause”—“No objection,” only the Public Broadcasting System was not caught flatfooted. The fortunate three hundred thousand (continental U.S.) watching their coverage were treated to an instant replay with no more than a scarcely perceptible pause for tape editing.

  After Munson’s appointment, the remaining twenty-six jurors were decided upon relatively rapidly. Many observers felt, however, that this quick process represented a covert agreement between counsel to avoid in so far as possible further demonstrations like the January twelfth (through twenty-seventh) riots in San Francisco. The appointment of Charles Hop Sing as the third regular juror was widely considered to have been an unacknowledged surrender to demands of the male-grocer-oriental-American community; and renewed violence among the Garment Workers, culminating in the Third Avenue brassiere march of February eleventh, helped fan a feeling of national urgency.

  By March sixteenth, the selection of the jury was complete; the presiding justice, Frederic K.C. McGrail, ordered a week’s recess during which the domed Bronco Stadium Complex was to be equipped with additional television cameras, dressing
rooms, permanent Mace distribution piping, a revolving stage, provision for the introduction of horses and (if necessary) elephants, means of flooding the center section to Row AAC, armored mechanical police (controlled from the gondola that also housed the transmitters required for a panoramic view of the court, and operated by a committee including representatives of the five major networks, the Senate of the United States, and the University of Chicago), a small dirigible to supplement the gondola, an aviary for carrier pigeons, three IBM 380 computers, recording equipment, cooking facilities to supplement the seven restaurants that formed a permanent part of the sports complex, a weather station, and black artificial grass surrounding a stauros.

  On May third of the following year, the arena was prepared, and the trial proper began. During the intervening thirteen months, however, competition for the fuchsia and gold passes that would admit the bearer had become almost unendurably intense. Twenty-four thousand seven hundred had been distributed to Broncos stockholders in full payment for the use of the stadium for as long as required. Another three hundred compensated the players themselves (both platoons) for up to six missed seasons. Allowing ample space for the jury, witnesses, attorneys, and press, left another three hundred and thirty-six thousand, seven hundred and eighty-one seats. Upon the President’s request, thirteen thousand of these were awarded to the White House staff, both Houses of Congress, the current graduating classes of the four service academies, and the legislature of the Commonwealth of Delaware (her native state). The competition for the remaining passes was almost beyond comprehension; counterfeiting was unquestionably responsible for a substantial part of the difficulties that were to plague admissions policies throughout the trial.

  Court was to convene at eleven, but the seating riots and the counter-violence espoused by the New Venue Rangers, a catch-as-catch-can coalition of Broncos fans, private security force executives, and Mother’s Clubs, delayed the first rap of the gavel until one fifty-eight.

  The opening motion was made by Brodie’s attorney, who requested a new trial, alleging certain irregularities in the selection of the jury. Court was recessed to consider this motion, reconvening on May thirty-first when Justice Hopkins denied it “at this time.” Following the luncheon recess, Deputy Prosecutor Eli Braincreek began the government’s case. Many seasoned critics noted that that during the entire presentation, which continued until June twenty-fifth, the ABC camera was fastened unwaveringly upon the countenance of Stephen Brodie, the defendant. Editorials in the Toledo Blade and the Houston Post speculated that this fixed regard was a strategy compounded with the network by Brodie’s lawyers. (Brodie was reputed to have been a steadfast partisan of certain ABC presentations when free, notably the “Monday Night Movie.”) An aging but still boyish commentator quipped that ABC had suffered a jammed swivel (on June thirteenth, NBC’s only reference to the affair), and another rival pointed out that since CBS’s cameras provided two views of Brodie (full face and three-quarter) CBS’s viewers actually saw more of him than ABC’s did. (This employment of the word more was challenged by the journalism review of the same name.)

  Whether ABC’s concentrated coverage was justified or not, it made apparent, as no other scrutiny did, the increasing tension to which Brodie was subjected. When Braincreek referred for the first time to the private yacht chartered by Antropopos and armed by him with heat-seeking underwater projectiles, Brodie was observed to wince visibly; and by the twentieth of June, when Ethel B. Saltzlust devoted four hours to the broken aquarium upon which Brodie was alleged to have cut his foot while sky diving, some thirty million persons observed the hesitating and even tremulous manner in which he extended his hand toward Ella Moneypenny-Hubert, the purported mother of his seven adopted Vietnam war-orphan heirs.

  During September, attention left the trial to center on the Congressional debate over the Perkins-O’Farrell Act, a bill that, when passed, (as it was the following month) would require a retroactive mandatory death penalty for Charges Thirteen, Fifteen, Twenty-One, and Twenty-Seven in the indictment. It was widely believed that the President would veto this bill; but late in the afternoon of October thirty-first she signed it at her seat in the stadium, the seventeen simulacra of herself imported from Disneyworld-Havana to deceive snipers acting in concert. That night Brodie attempted suicide in his cell, knotting a strip torn from his shirt about his neck and the bars in his door, and jumping from his bunk after slashing his wrists with fragments of his artificial eye (injuries eerily reminiscent of those inflicted three years previously when he had been attacked by a demonic model aircraft—a Second World War B-17—allegedly under the control of Hess DeLobel. Over a quarter of a million persons volunteered to give blood, most, apparently, under the illusion that the donation would involve an artery-to-artery meeting with Brodie. [The actual transfusion came from a turnkey, Raymond R. Swain; Swain was assassinated the following year.]

  Two weeks before Christmas, Arnone Harper, acting for the prosecution, called to the stand the first of the persons alleged to have been employed for illicit purposes by Brodie and others. The witness, Melinda Bettis, known professionally as “Fayette City Red,” made a strong impression on the spectators. Her appearance was followed by those of Wanda Wood, Jo-Anne Blake, Eve Smythe (“Nova Demure”), Everett H. White (“Carol Clark”), and Sonya Plum Blossom; Ms. Plum Blossom testified that both the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary-General of the United Nations had been present at the party given on board the guided-missile carrier Mayaguez Incident during the special elections. (Later confirmed by the General Assembly, though denied by the Security Council.) Several witnesses stated that Brodie and others had hoped to gain world-wide control, both monetary and military, on or before the occasion of the U.S.S.A. debacle; and Elizabeth Cushy, a witness whose shapely legs, slender waist, and voluptuous decolletage earned her the highest ratings achieved to that date by any prosecution presentation, stated under oath that Brodie had told her in confidence that had the judge not intervened, he had planned (it being the previous year) to pack the courtroom with persons attached by oath, as well as by bonds of gratitude, to himself and to Giznik. Following this testimony, Justice Russell ordered the court cleared. This required a ten-day recess, during which seventeen thousand persons (New Yorker estimate) were injured, and a mausoleum belonging to Scholla was appropriated by a thief who used its flamethrowers to clear a path through the Seventh Marines and down Pennsylvania Avenue. The mausoleum was to have been the prosecution’s Exhibit C.

  On January twenty-fifth the trial reopened, but it closed again almost at once when a bomb exploded under the press gallery during the mid-day recess. A different kind of bombshell struck the court on February fourteenth, when Caleb Cohen III, acting for Brodie, announced that his client was entering Guilty pleas to Charges Eight, Sixteen, Seventeen, and Forty-Seven, and altering his plea of Not Guilty—insofar as it applied to Twenty-One, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, and Forty-Two—to Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity. All these changes of plea were refused “In the public interest,” and on February tenth, Brodie attempted suicide a second time.

  By mid-March the prosecution’s case was practically complete. The chiefs of state of the United States and five foreign governments (East Germany, West Germany, Iran, Sweden, and Morocco) had appeared to testify against Brodie; so had eighteen well-known television personalities. Over three hundred hours of tape had been played. The famous “sly spy films” had been shown to the jury twice and supplemented with stills showing Brodie looking toward the stars (Cassiopeia); Brodie with his right arm around the shoulders of his (then) wife, Angella Brodie Yuppe; Brodie marching to protest the pollution of the Windward Passage; Brodie playing chess in a store window with an old man (Stanislas Henryk Chvojka, black, won in twenty-eight moves); and Brodie picking apples in a “pick your own for three dollars a bushel” deal at Apple City.

  The prosecution’s summing-up lasted less than a week, and on March twenty-fourth Brodie took the stand in his own defense and,
in a surprise move, left it almost at once to thrust his arm into the divine fire, then burning on a table before the jury, where it was the prosecution’s Exhibit K. With his hand in the flame, Brodie swore his innocence. On the news that night, NBC, CBS, and ABC reported that the Mosque of Omar had collapsed during an earthquake, the last wall of the Temple of Solomon had fallen, and a voice had been heard crying, “Pan is reborn!” near the Isles of Paxi. Within three weeks Brodie had a reported five hundred thousand disciples, most of them sworn to abstain from the use of genital sprays as well as from the eating of any kind of meat. I believe it is safe to say that all of us felt then that the real prosecution had not yet begun.

  In Looking- Glass Castle

  “I’M GLAD YOU’RE NEW TO FLORIDA,” the real estate agent said, “because this place is such a treat. It’s nice to be able to give somebody that kind of welcome.” She looked across at Ms. Daisy McKane and smiled. She was quite good looking, Ms. McKane thought, tanned and freckled, though perhaps a little too old.

  “Florida has been a treat already,” Ms. McKane said, trying to put a slight emphasis on the fourth and fifth words. “So nice. I’ve met such lovely people.”

  Her left hand was beside her leg, where the agent could touch it easily if she wished. She did not. Ms. McKane looked out the window at the dreary landscape of palmetto and swamp grass baking under the noonday sun. “Are you certain your batteries are up?” she asked after a time. She had a horror of running down on a lonely road, and so many roads were lonely now.

  “Brand new and freshly charged,” the agent announced cheerfully. “Nothing to worry about. Florida is easy on cars anyway since they’ve gone to fiberglass bodies. The salt air used to corrode the aluminum ones something awful. A sort of sickly white dust. Where did you say you worked?”