Interlibrary Loan

by Gene Wolfe

  Still breathless I managed, “Very little religiosity, certainly.”

  “Perhaps you should put down my book.”

  I returned it to her table. “We live in a time of peace and prosperity.” It sounded pedantic, but I pressed on. “At such times most of us feel small need to have recourse to…”

  “You’ve thought of something. What is it?”

  “Once when I was riding in a trailer we passed through a ruined town. A ragged child stood at the side of the road, watching us go by. Somewhere a bell tolled, just as we passed her; she turned and hurried away. I wondered about that afterward.”

  “Was she going to worship?” The big, dark eyes were still unreadable; the pale face held no expression.

  I nodded. “That’s what I concluded. With her mother, she would implore God to send them food and decent clothing. Wastepaper, sticks, or dried grass that might be burned in winter. I hope He complied.”

  Mrs. Fevre’s voice softened. “You’re not permitted money, are you? That is my understanding.”

  “Quite correct. No money and few personal possessions. I have this watch.” I showed it to her. “We surrender our clothing in the evening and receive pajamas or nightgowns. Presumably our pockets are emptied before our clothes are washed. What is found there is seldom returned.”

  “It seems a miserable existence.”

  “We are like books. We possess the contents of our minds. A few clover leaves, like my watch, pressed between our pages. Nothing more.”

  “This book of mine”—Mrs. Fevre glanced at the book on her table—“possesses a map. Had you considered that?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “No, I hadn’t. Thank you for calling it to my attention. Does it understand what it has?”

  She stared at me.

  “Is the map mentioned in the text? Are there clues in the text that might explain why the map is there? Or what that small green rectangle invokes?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I haven’t read it, and I never thought of that.”

  “What drug is in the green ink? And where did you get the book?”

  “It was my husband’s.” Mrs. Fevre sighed. “It’s been years. A decade—no, more than that, Mr. Smithe. Twelve years now, I suppose. Thirteen or more.”

  “Do you know where he got it?”

  “No.” Her empty gaze was up, at the ceiling. “I have no idea.”

  “I don’t want to pry, Mrs. Fevre; but what was his name?”

  “Ah, the bookplate. Naturally you’re curious. It’s not his. His name was Fevre—what did I say?”

  Fevre! I had missed that one and felt like kicking myself. “Never mind. I didn’t intend to interrupt you.”

  “Dr. Barry Fevre. You’ve met our daughter; she must not have told you her full name.”

  “Correct, and I apologize for interrupting. Will you tell me a little more about your husband? It could be important.”

  “If you wish. The old copy asked the same thing. No doubt you’ll have many of the same questions.”

  Well, well, I thought. Aloud I said, “Not necessarily. Was this old one from the police? A private investigator? Someone of that kind?”

  “The old reclone. The library here has two of you, Mr. Smithe; I assumed you knew. Two copies, but the other one’s an earlier edition. I checked him out six weeks ago and returned him, oh, eight or ten days ago. The library would never have permitted me to check you out today if I hadn’t.” Faintly, she smiled. “You look surprised.”

  “I am. I should’ve guessed, of course; there were several…” I felt as though I were choking. “Well, never mind. I haven’t spoken to the old copy, Mrs. Fevre; so I may have to cover much the same ground he did. You were telling me about your husband. Barry Fevre was your husband? I believe you said so. He was Chandra’s father?”

  Gently, Adah Fevre nodded. “Barry and I were married, Mr. Smithe, and I was faithful. That was the name he chose for her, by the way—Chandra. She hadn’t been born when he began using it.… I don’t know where he learned the name. Does it matter?”

  “Is it possible that he got it from this book?”

  Mrs. Fevre shrugged. “I suppose so. As I said, I haven’t read it. Or he may simply have been twitting me. My family originated in India, Mr. Smithe. We lived upon the island called Britain for four or five generations, then emigrated again. Where and why is rather a long story, and I’d prefer not to get into it.”

  “Then we won’t. He had the book and you don’t know where he got it. When did you learn of it?”

  “When I cleaned out our cabin and moved here. It was in one of his bags.” Mrs. Fevre paused. “Before we talk much longer you’ll want a full explanation. Let me give it now; that should save some time.”

  My nod gave permission.

  4

  ADAH’S STORY

  “Did you rebel against your parents, Mr. Smithe?” Adah Fevre’s gentle smile softened it. “I mean hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and long before you became an author.”

  I smiled back. “I’m afraid so. One must, or remain a child for life. At least, that’s how it seems to me when I look back; so I disobeyed and disobeyed, and eventually left them. Now I’d give everything I have or ever will have…”

  “So did I—rebel I mean. Or at least I wanted to and quite honestly believed I had. My parents—my poor mother particularly—hoped and prayed that I would marry a doctor. I was determined not to, precisely because she did. I went out with all kinds of men, an engineer, a policeman, an athlete, a young businessman who seemed so dishonest that I felt he was sure to become rich, and so forth. The engineer bored me, the policeman married somebody else, the athlete thought much too well of himself, and the businessman was indicted and tried to borrow money from my father.

  “Eventually chance led me to Barry. He and his brother Simon taught at the university in Spice Grove. Barry was handsome, personable, intelligent, and kind; I thought of him as a professor. By the time I realized that he taught in the medical school, I was deeply in love with him. Smitten! I felt certain that I would never find a finer man. We were actually on our honeymoon before I learned that he was a doctor of medicine, an M.D.” Adah Fevre laughed, a self-mocking titter. “Fate makes fools of us all, long before the end. Have you noticed?”

  I admitted I had. Though I wanted to explain that I had once been married, I did not.

  “Not so long ago, I was a great reader, Mr. Smithe. Now that I have unlimited time in which to read and a tablet that will make the type so large that even I can read it without my contacts, it holds no savor for me. As a child I used to read in bed when my parents thought me asleep. Stolen fruit’s sweetest, you know. Tell me a story, Mr. Smithe. Will you tell me a story? Please?”

  “I’d rather have you tell me a great deal more about Dr. Barry Fevre. Is this where he taught in the medical school? When you married, did you live here in Polly’s Cove?”

  She smiled. “No, not at all. I—I doubt that you’ll understand, Mr. Smithe.”

  “Perhaps not. May I venture a wild guess? I expect to be wrong, but I’d like to try even so.” Certain that I was right, I paused to build a little suspense. “Did you grow up in High Plains?”

  “We … I suppose I must have told the old copy that.” Adah Fevre’s voice held a slight tremor. “I didn’t think I had, but I suppose I must have.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t. As I said, I haven’t spoken to him. You loved Dr. Barry Fevre and married him—you just said so. What happened then?”

  “We were married for three years. Barry taught and I worked in my father’s business, then Barry’s sabbatical year came. Do you know about those, Mr. Smithe?”

  I shook my head. “Tell me.”

  “Tenured academics get every seventh year off—a year in which they can do anything they wish. It’s a year-long paid vacation, really, although the university expects them to make good use of the time.”

  “I understand. Please continue.”


  “We had just learned that I was pregnant. The baby wouldn’t come for another twenty weeks or so. Barry told me he was going to leave me while he went away to do research; he wouldn’t be gone for more than six weeks at most. I could have a nice long visit with my parents—do I sound bitter, Mr. Smithe?”

  “A little bitter, perhaps.”

  “I am. I told him he had to stay home or take me with him. I was amenable to either one of those; but if he went away leaving me alone, I would file for divorce and swear that he had deserted me. He agreed to take me with him, but he refused to tell me where we were going. He was rarely like iron, but he was then; he insisted that he didn’t know the name of the place himself. It was a lie—I knew it was a lie, and he knew I knew it—but no matter what I said he stuck to it.”

  I found that interesting and told her so.

  “Mysterious, you mean.” Her voice held self-contempt. “It was. It was very mysterious, but I thought about it a lot, and eventually I got an idea. Do you want to hear it? You’ll think I’ve gone mad, I’m sure, and it was hardly more than a—well, than intuition. A woman’s intuition, and I would much prefer that we skip right over it.”

  I smiled. “Still, you must have confided in the old copy.”

  “No, Mr. Smithe, I did not. Let’s forget about it. Barry explained that he was going to have to hire a boat, so we flew to the coast—”

  I had raised my hand. “We’ve skipped over your hunch. I’d like to hear it.”

  Slowly, Mrs. Fevre rolled her head back and forth upon the pillow. “I’d rather not.”

  “You teased me with it. It may be important, and I’d like to hear it.”

  “All right, but please don’t laugh. For some reason I felt quite sure that he was looking for cadavers.”

  No doubt I stared at her. “You’re going to have to explain that, Mrs. Fevre.”

  “I shall. Barry taught anatomy, among other things. You’ve seen drawings of the human body. Here’s where the heart is, here are the lungs, here’s the stomach, and so forth. Everybody has.”

  I leaned forward, straining to hear.

  “What the books don’t tell you is that every real human body is different. The spleen may or may not be in the normal position. The small intestine may be unusually long or unusually short. You can’t lick your own forehead and neither can I, but there are people who can. Doctors have to learn all that, not just where everything ought to be according to some reference, but that you can never count on its actually being there and looking the way you think it ought to look. Am I making myself clear?”

  I said, “Yes. Perfectly.”

  “It’s taught to medical students by having them dissect cadavers. This is distasteful, I know.”

  I agreed and urged her to go ahead with it anyway.

  “Obtaining cadavers is always difficult. Some cities will allow nearby medical schools to take the corpses of derelicts—corpses that cannot be identified and do not appear to have died by violence. It would be possible, of course, to grow and sacrifice clones or even reclones, but it would be ruinously costly.”

  Mrs. Fevre fell silent for so long that I was afraid she would not speak again. At last she asked, “Do you know about Burke and Hare, Mr. Smithe?”

  I nodded to gain a little time. “I believe I’ve heard of them. They pretended to be resurrection men, grave robbers who dug up fresh corpses in cemeteries and sold them to medical schools. It was a dangerous occupation, because friends and relatives of the deceased often guarded their graves. To obviate that danger, Burke and Hare murdered people in order to sell their corpses. They were caught when they killed a girl who had been flirting with some of the medical students a few hours before she turned up—still warm—on their dissection table.” Talking about that centuries-old classic crime woke the memory of a bit of verse, and I managed to chant it without stumbling.

  “Through the close

  And up the stair,

  Butt an’ ben wi’ Burke and Hare.

  Burke’s the butcher,

  Hare’s the thief,

  And Knox the boy who buys the beef.”

  Mrs. Fevre nodded. “For years my husband had been unable to obtain as many cadavers as he needed. Very few people are willing to donate their bodies after death, although Barry and I signed the paper some years ago. People are living longer and longer, and the days when derelicts might starve in the streets are long past—there are pantries distributing surplus food and free kitchens, a great many of both. I’m told that some of the food is really quite good, and the worst of it will keep you alive.” She paused, tired and discontent. “You … know about all that, I’m sure.”

  “You supposed that your husband had learned of a new source of cadavers.”

  “Yes, I did. And what I had guessed was precisely right. He explained that we would have to hire a boat; apparently our destination was an island off the coast or something of the sort. Hundreds of little islands, islands of small or no importance, are omitted from all but the very best maps. No doubt you know.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t.”

  “Seamen’s charts used to show them. Now they get the charts on their screens, and I would think those must show them, too. I don’t actually know that they do, but it seems probable since a ship might run aground there. Some of the little, unmapped islands are inhabited—one family or two, or even a dozen. Some once were but have been abandoned for years or centuries. I learned most of this from our boat, after Barry—after Barry…” She fell silent, visibly struggling to maintain her self-control.

  “I understand.” I tried to make it sympathetic.

  “After he left me. Have I told you about the boat?”

  “No, nothing. Tell me about it, please.”

  “It wasn’t clean or pretty, and it certainly wasn’t luxurious; but when Barry found it we had been going up and down the coast looking for something for hire that we could afford for almost two weeks. We went aboard, talked to the boat and got it to tell us how to go around and look at everything, then snapped it up. Barry paid its price, as he told me afterward. He had been so afraid of losing it that he just authorized a draft for the full amount the boat had asked.”

  I said, “I understand. Tell me a little about this boat, please. Describe it as well as you can. I know you’re not a sailor; I’m not either.”

  “All right. It was a fishing boat, not just a sailboat. There are laws about how long the boats can fish. Do you know about those?”

  I shook my head.

  “Each year they’re limited to so many days. If they can catch a lot in that time, all right. If they catch next to nothing, that’s their bad luck. Every year all the boats go out on the first fishing day. They fish day and night, no rest for the crew and no maintenance for the boat. I can’t imagine what they’re like on the last day, practically wrecked, I suppose. There are refrigerated bins down under the main deck; if a boat’s been lucky, those bins are full or nearly full of fish and the boat receives lots of money, enough to pay its crew, maintain itself, and pass a good profit up to its owners. If it hasn’t been lucky at all, the boat and its crew have worked like slaves for next to nothing. It must be a terribly hard existence.”

  Completely unable to guess where this was going, I agreed.

  “Most fishing boats just stay in port when the fishing days are over, but this one remained as active as it could, trying to make a little extra money here and there. If two or three people wanted to go out to one of the islands, it would take them. Whenever they were ready to come back, or whenever some island people wanted to visit the mainland, it would go out and pick them up. It took sportsmen deep-sea fishing for so much a day.” Adah Fevre paused.

  When I did not speak, she said, “Sport fishing is still allowed if you have a license. It has to be hook-and-line, though.” She paused again, sighing audibly. “Electrodes and nets are not permitted.”

  “Your husband chartered this boat,” I said. “Do you know the terms of th
e agreement?”

  “Only what it told me. It was to follow the course that Barry had laid down, and tell Barry immediately about anything it saw. It was to wake up Barry if he were asleep.”

  “Any land?”

  “Yes. Or any other boats, or ships, or things floating in the water. Birds flying over. Anything at all.”

  The list puzzled me, but I tried not to let it show. I asked, “Where did your husband get off the boat?”

  “I don’t know. First, I think I ought to tell you about the cabins.” Mrs. Fevre hesitated, her head still on the pillow, her big dark eyes staring blindly up at the ceiling and never sparing a glance for me. “There were three, a large, comfortable cabin and two smaller cabins. It charged more for the big cabin, of course.”

  I said, “Go on, please.”

  “That one had two bunks, one above the other, a table, four chairs, a stove, and so forth. Two closets, too.”

  “I take it that when you and your husband were on board there were no other fully humans, no clones, and no ’bots. No other passengers of any kind. Correct?”

  Her nod was almost imperceptible. “That’s how it was. We bought two new mattresses and sheets and blankets for our bunks before we put out. The boat didn’t mind. It was glad to get them, Barry told me.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “We had brought a good deal of luggage. I, at least, didn’t know where we were going or how long we’d be gone. I brought some summer things and some warm things. A lot of cosmetics, too; soap and several towels, plus some odds and ends I thought Barry might need. I had five bags.” She paused. “A set of matched luggage.”

  I nodded.

  “Barry was almost as bad, three large bags. One was too heavy for me to lift. I remember that, because I had to hire a longshoreman to carry our luggage ashore for me when we came back to port.”

  I said, “This was after your husband disappeared, I assume.”

  “Yes. I went back to the hotel—”

  “Tell me about Barry’s disappearance, please. I’m afraid we’ve skipped over that.”