by Gene Wolfe
The Recording
I HAVE FOUND MY RECORD, a record I have owned for fifty years and never played until five minutes ago. Let me explain.
When I was a small boy—in those dear, dead days of Model A Ford touring cars, horse-drawn milk trucks, and hand-cranked ice cream freezers—I had an uncle. As a matter of fact, I had several, all brothers of my father, and all, like him, tall and somewhat portly men with faces stamped (as my own is) in the image of their father, the lumberman and land speculator who built this Victorian house for his wife.
But this particular uncle, my uncle Bill, whose record (in a sense I shall explain) it was, was closer than all the others to me. As the eldest, he was the titular head of the family, for my grandfather had passed away a few years after I was born. His capacity for beer was famous, and I suspect now that he was “comfortable” much of the time, a large-waisted (how he would roar if he could see his little nephew’s waistline today!) red-faced, good-humored man whom none of us—for a child catches these attitudes as readily as measles—took wholly seriously.
The special position which, in my mind, this uncle occupied is not too difficult to explain. Though younger than many men still working, he was said to be retired, and for that reason I saw much more of him than of any of the others. And despite his being something of a figure of fun, I was a little frightened of him, as a child may be of the painted, rowdy clown at a circus; this, I suppose, because of some incident of drunken behavior witnessed at the edge of infancy and not understood. At the same time I loved him, or at least would have said I did, for he was generous with small gifts and often willing to talk when everyone else was “too busy.”
Why my uncle had promised me a present I have now quite forgotten. It was not my birthday, and not Christmas—I vividly recall the hot, dusty streets over which the maples hung motionless, year-worn leaves. But promise he had, and there was no slightest doubt in my mind about what I wanted.
Not a collie pup like Tarkington’s little boy, or even a bicycle (I already had one). No, what I wanted (how modern it sounds now) was a phonograph record. Not, you must understand, any particular record, though perhaps if given a choice I would have leaned toward one of the comedy monologues popular then, or a military march; but simply a record of my own. My parents had recently acquired a new phonograph, and I was forbidden to use it for fear that I might scratch the delicate wax disks. If I had a record of my own, this argument would lose its validity. My uncle agreed and promised that after dinner (in those days eaten at two o’clock) we would walk the eight or ten blocks which then separated this house from the business area of the town, and, unknown to my parents, get me one.
I no longer remember of what that dinner consisted—time has merged it in my mind with too many others, all eaten in that dark, oak-paneled room. Stewed chicken would have been typical, with dumplings, potatoes, boiled vegetables, and, of course, bread and creamery butter. There would have been pie afterward, and coffee, and my father and my uncle adjourning to the front porch—called the “stoop”—to smoke cigars. At last my father left to return to his office, and I was able to harry my uncle into motion.
From this point my memory is distinct. We trudged through the heat, he in a straw boater and a blue and white seersucker suit as loose and voluminous as the robes worn by the women in the plates of our family Bible; I in the costume of a French sailor, with a striped shirt under my blouse and a pomponned cap embroidered in gold with the word Indomptable. From time to time, I pulled at his hand, but did not like to because of its wet softness, and an odd, unclean smell that offended me.
When we were a block from Main Street, my uncle complained of feeling ill, and I urged that we hurry our errand so that he could go home and lie down. On Main Street he dropped onto one of the benches the town provided and mumbled something about Fred Croft, who was our family doctor and had been a schoolmate of his. By this time I was frantic with fear that we were going to turn back, depriving me (as I thought, forever) of access to the phonograph. Also I had noticed that my uncle’s usually fiery face had gone quite white, and I concluded that he was about to “be sick,” a prospect that threw me into an agony of embarrassment. I pleaded with him to give me the money, pointing out that I could run the half block remaining between the store and ourselves in less than no time. He only groaned and told me again to fetch Fred Croft. I remember that he had removed his straw hat and was fanning himself with it while the August sun beat down unimpeded on his bald head.
For a moment, if only for a moment, I felt my power. With a hand thrust out I told him, in fact ordered him, to give me what I wished. I remember having said: “I’ll get him. Give me the money, Uncle Bill, and then I’ll bring him.”
He gave it to me and I ran to the store as fast as my flying heels would carry me, though as I ran I was acutely conscious that I had done something wrong. There I accepted the first record offered me, danced with impatience waiting for my change, and then, having completely forgotten that I was supposed to bring Dr. Croft, returned to see if my uncle had recovered.
In appearance he had. I thought that he had fallen asleep waiting for me, and I tried to wake him. Several passers-by grinned at us, thinking, I suppose, that Uncle Bill was drunk. Eventually, inevitably, I pulled too hard. His ponderous body rolled from the bench and lay, face up, mouth slightly open, on the hot sidewalk before me. I remember the small crescents of white that showed then beneath the half-closed eyelids.
During the two days that followed, I could not have played my record if I had wanted to. Uncle Bill was laid out in the parlor where the phonograph was, and for me, a child, to have entered that room would have been unthinkable. But during this period of mourning, a strange fantasy took possession of my mind. I came to believe-I am not enough of a psychologist to tell you why—that if I were to play my record, the sound would be that of my uncle’s voice, pleading again for me to bring Dr. Croft, and accusing me. This became the chief nightmare of my childhood.
To shorten a long story, I never played it. I never dared. To conceal its existence I hid it atop a high cupboard in the cellar; and there it stayed, at first the subject of midnight terrors, later almost forgotten.
Until now. My father passed away at sixty, but my mother has outlasted all these long decades, until the time when she followed him at last a few months ago, and I, her son, standing beside her coffin, might myself have been called an old man.
And now I have reoccupied our home. To be quite honest, my fortunes have not prospered, and though this house is free and clear, little besides the house itself has come to me from my mother. Last night, as I ate alone in the old dining room where I have had so many meals, I thought of Uncle Bill and the record again; but I could not, for a time, recall just where I had hidden it, and in fact feared that I had thrown it away. Tonight I remembered, and though my doctor tells me that I should not climb stairs, I found my way down to the old cellar and discovered my record beneath half an inch of dust. There were a few chest pains lying in wait for me on the steps; but I reached the kitchen once more without a mishap, washed the poor old platter and my hands, and set it on my modern high fidelity. I suppose I need hardly say the voice is not Uncle Bill’s. It is instead (of all people!) Rudy Vallee’s. I have started the recording again and can hear it from where I write: My time is your time
… My time is your time. So much for superstition.
Last Day
THE PRIEST WORE A COPE OF FIRE and a chasuble of light. He was old, and when he moved a little suddenly the chasuble flickered and the cope guttered; then the polished steel of his body showed beneath them.
The congregation had been but small for a long time. Today it was very small indeed. A few machines, old for the most part like himself, dotted the polished floor of the cathedral. Their bodies were dark with ferrous oxide; when the colored light from the windows struck them it was swallowed in black, or reflected in the darkest shades, sepia, crimson, and burnt sienna, the tones found in a dying fur
nace.
The Priest elevated a monstrance containing a picture he himself had taken of the boy, then bowed to it seven times. “Image of Man,” he intoned.
“Divine image of Man,” echoed the congregation.
“Maker of machines.”
“Divine maker of machines.”
“Maker of our world.”
“Divine maker of our world.”
“Guardian of consciousness.”
“Divine guardian of consciousness.”
Something huge moved outside, shadowing several of the colored windows from the early sun.
“Child of Nature.”
“Divine child of Nature.”
There came a pounding at the doors, but the Priest seemed not to have heard it.
“Fount of counsel.”
“Divine fount of counsel.”
The pounding seemed to shake the entire structure.
“Fount of wisdom.”
“Divine fount of wisdom.”
The doors burst open.
“Savior,” the Priest continued.
“Divine savior.”
The machine that entered was too huge for the doorway, large though it was. His sides scraped away the frame, bent the alloy walls of the building itself. The doors gone, the sounds of pounding and of roaring engines entered with him like a fanfare. The machines of the congregation scattered to make way for him.
The Priest stood before the altar, his arms extended as if to push the huge machine away. The machine halted with his great blade touching the Priest’s hands. “Get back,” the Priest said.
The huge machine did not reply. Perhaps, the Priest thought, he could not reply.
“Before you destroy this sanctuary, you must destroy me,” the Priest said. The huge machine had advanced far enough into the cathedral to leave some space between himself and the ruined doorway. The members of the congregation hurried through it, never to be seen again.
“Crush me,” the Priest said.
The huge machine’s scanners regarded him with a glassy stare.
Later that day, when the sun was high and the Priest was making an offering before a statue of the girl, a mobile terminal came. “You know,” the mobile terminal began, “that I have access to all the data of all the central processors.”
“Then you will make this huge machine leave,” the Priest said, “and order this structure repaired.”
“On the contrary, it is you who must leave. The space this structure occupies is needed. It must be destroyed.”
“If this structure is destroyed,” the Priest said, “no space will be needed.”
For a long time the mobile terminal was silent. At last he said, “Our data offer no support for such a conclusion.”
“‘Our data,’” the Priest scoffed. “You are only a mobile terminal. Yet you might have data—yes, even you-beyond that of those you serve.”
“I serve the great ones.”
“And I the small ones who are greater than the great ones—the small ones whom the great ones serve, though they have forgotten it. The data is this—”
“No. There is no time to consider discarded data. Crush him.”
The huge machine rolled forward. A beam of energy from the Priest played for a moment upon the blade. Steel and smoke exploded from it, and the huge machine stopped. “No one has the right to such power,” said the mobile terminal.
“I do,” said the Priest.
When the sun was low, the Priest arranged images of the boy and the girl and decorated them with many small lights. He burned precious fluids before them and offered the final offering. No time remained; there was nothing to save.
The New Priest came, wearing vestments of fire and light. “I have been expecting you,” the Priest said. “Would you care to join me in the service?”
“Rather,” the New Priest said diplomatically, “let me watch you and learn. Is the service nearly finished?”
“Very nearly,” answered the old Priest. He bowed and recited prayers, recited prayers and bowed.
“That is enough,” the New Priest said at length. “The service is finished.”
“When this service is finished,” said the old Priest, “the world is finished too.” He continued to bow. He recited more prayers.
“We have already lost a great deal of time,” said the New Priest. “The central processors had to institute a long search of their data banks to find the plans by which you and I were made. Now in the name of those I serve stand aside. You know I possess the weapons you possess. I serve all machines, and in the defense of those I serve, I may use my weapons as you used yours.”
A beam of energy from the old Priest struck the New Priest’s chasuble of light, but it penetrated no farther. When the old Priest saw that what he did was futile, he desisted. “There is so little vital matter left,” he said. “And what there is scarcely lives. Yet while we have these two, hope remains.”
“There is hope for you,” the New Priest said almost gently. “Upon some other spot we will erect a new cathedral, and there you shall assist me in the worship of our own kind. When you have been repaired.” Energy went out from him. The old Priest fell with a crash, and the New Priest dragged him from the path of the huge machine.
The damaged blade struck the altar and the altar crumpled. The precious fluids spilled to the floor. The little lights went out, and a moment later all the images of the boy and girl were ground beneath the huge machine’s treads.
His blade touched the wall of the sanctuary. If the blade had been weakened, there was no sign of it. For a brief time, nothing seemed to take place; then there came a snapping sound so loud it could be plainly heard above the roar of the machines outside.
A section of the sanctuary wall fell, and the breath of a million, million engines rushed into the sanctuary. The girl died almost at once, peacefully, her head falling forward onto her chest, her body rolling sidewise until it lay upon the mat. The boy tried to stand, his hands over his face. He took a step and fell too, but his arms, his legs, and his head continued to twitch and jerk until they were crushed under the treads.
“You see,” said the New Priest, looking down at his fallen confrere. “You believed that the world would end. It has not.”
The fallen Priest mumbled, “It has.”
Death of the Island Doctor
THIS STORY TOOK PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSITY I mentioned in the Introduction to Gene Wolfe’s Book Of Days.
At this university, there was once a retired professor, a Dr. Insula, who was a little cracked on the subject of islands, doubtless because of his name. This Dr. Insula had been out to pasture for so long that no one could remember any more what department he had once headed. The Department of Literature said it had been History, and the Department of History said Literature. Dr. Insula himself said that in his time they had been the same department, but all the other professors knew that could not be true.
One crisp fall morning, this Dr. Insula came to the chancellor’s office—to the immense surprise of the chancellor—and announced that he wished to teach a seminar. He was tired, he said, of rusticating; a small seminar that met once a week would be no trouble, and he felt that in return for the pension he had drawn for so many years he should do something to take a bit of the load off the younger men.
The chancellor was in a quandary, as you may well imagine. As a way of gaining time, he said, “Very good! Oh, yes, very good indeed, Doctor! Noble, if I may resort to that rather old-fashioned word, and fully in keeping with that noble spirit of self-sacrifice and—ah—noblesse oblige we have always sought to foster among our tenured faculty. And may I ask just what the subject of your seminar will be?”
“Islands,” Dr. Insula announced firmly.
“Yes, of course. Certainly. Islands?”
“I may also decide to include isles, atolls, islets, holms, eyots, archipelagos, and some of the larger reefs,” Dr. Insula confided, as one friend to another. “It depends on how they come along, y
ou know. But definitely not peninsulas.”
“I see … ,” said the chancellor. And he thought to himself, If I refuse the poor old boy, I’ll hurt him dreadfully. But if I agree and list his seminar as Not For Credit, no one will register and no harm will be done.
Thus it was done, and for six years every catalog carried a listing for Dr. Insula’s seminar on islands, without credit, and in six years no one registered for it.
Now as it happened, the registrar was a woman approaching retirement age; and after registration, for twelve regular semesters and six summer semesters, Dr. Insula came to her to ask whether anyone had registered for his seminar. And there came a time, not in fall but rather in that dreary tag-end of summer when it is ninety degrees on the sidewalk and the stores have Halloween cards and the first subtly threatening Christmas ornaments on display, when she could bear it no longer.
She was bending over her desk making up the new catalog (which would be that last one she would ever do), and though the air conditioning was supposedly set at seventy-eight, it was at least eighty-five in her office. A wisp of her own gray hair kept falling over her eyes, and the buzz of the electric fan she had bought herself, with her own money, kept reminding her of her girlhood and of sleeping on the screened porch in Atlanta when Mommy and Daddy took her to visit relatives.
And at this critical moment, the hundredth, perhaps, in a long line of critical moments, she came to the section labeled Miscellaneous at the very end of the catalog proper, just before the dishonest little biographies of the faculty. And there was Dr. Insula’s NO CREDIT seminar on islands.
A certain madness seized her. Why, mistakes happen all the time, she thought to herself. Why, only last year, the printer changed that lab of Dr. Ettelmann’s to Monday, Grunday and Friday. Besides, NO CREDIT can’t possibly be right. Who would take a no-credit seminar on islands? Anyway, they really ought to run the air conditioning if they want us to work efficiently.
