by Gene Wolfe
It was a compliment worth filing away for the dark hours. I said, “I never knew a policewoman could be such a charming friend.”
“Thanks, you win. Will you help with my investigation? You ought to, after that.”
I was tempted to say that since she was fully human and I wasn’t I’d have to. It was true, but it would’ve taken us into territory I didn’t want to visit; so I substituted, “All I can, certainly. How can I be of help?”
“You weren’t there when Dr. Fevre was killed. Correct?”
I nodded. “Correct. I was sitting on a shelf in that rather unpleasant library.”
“Would you have killed him if you could? Honestly now. Lies won’t help me.”
“No. I would not.”
“Why not?”
“For a long list of reasons. How many do you want?”
“What’s number one?”
“I’m a reclone. Dr. Fevre was fully human. If the authorities—that’s you, among a million others—so much as suspected I had killed him, I’d be burned.”
“Let’s have more.”
“Killing him would be morally wrong. Maybe I should have led with that one. I have no right to make private judgments or perform private executions. Third, I had nothing to gain by his death. Fourth, he had never harmed me or even insulted me. Is that enough?”
“Not quite.”
Polly’s Cove was some distance behind us now. Pastures held little fawn dots I decided were dairy cattle. Most of the houses had pointed towers and big featureless buildings that were probably silos and barns. I wondered where we were going, but this seemed like a bad time to ask.
I said, “On top of the reasons I’ve already given, his daughter, Chandra, had checked me out. She did it as her mother’s surrogate, but I felt that she was my patron. The law would say she wasn’t, but that was how I felt. Legally I’d be killing my patron’s husband. Emotionally I’d be killing my patron’s father.”
“Go on.”
“Dr. Fevre had checked out two of my friends, Millie Baumgartner and Rose Romain. Naturally they were deeply grateful; we always are when anybody checks us out. They would’ve spoken well of me, just as I speak well of them. Dr. Fevre and I were acquainted, and so on; there seemed to be a pretty good chance that he might check me out someday. We’re burned when there isn’t any reader demand for us. Do you know about that?”
Continental Turner nodded. “It must be a hell of a way to live.”
“You get used to it,” I told her.
We were silent after that, while I reflected that a Continental cop was at least as likely to be shot as I was to be burned. That must be a hell of a way to live, too.
15
STRANGERS IN THE HOUSE
For the first few kilometers, I thought we were on our way to police headquarters in Polly’s Cove. When we finally got to where we were going, it turned out to be a cluster of gray buildings surrounded by a high concrete wall. Wide steel gates half opened to let us in, and shut behind us fast and with a solid clang. The silence that followed made me think there might be no prisoners and for that matter no guards. In a room on the top floor of a building without windows I was told to sit in a machine with half a dozen dials and a big screen I couldn’t watch. A helmet was positioned on my head and I got quizzed all over again, this time by a little man with rimless glasses. I told him the same things I had already told Katrine Turner. They didn’t satisfy him, and after a while I got the feeling that nothing ever would.
It was already pretty dark when I was brought back to Katrine and her ebony groundcar. It had seemed to me that the examination went on forever; it must have been six or seven hours really. “I’m supposed to bring you back to the house where I picked you up,” Katrine told me. “Would you rather go someplace else?”
I said yes, that I’d rather go where I belonged, which was the Spice Grove Public Library.
“I can’t go that far, but I’ll talk to the people in Polly’s Cove about you.”
I thanked her. Coming from a Continental cop it was bound to do some good.
“Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever asked your opinion, Smithe. Who do you think murdered Dr. Fevre?”
“I don’t think, I know.” I sort of braced myself, feeling pretty sure she wouldn’t believe it and I might get slapped around for saying it. Being a library reference can be tough. Trust me, it often is.
“A big guy in a pointed helmet with feathers and gadgets on it,” I said. “He came out of a side passage on my floor. I’ve gone down that a little way and tried to open some of the doors—there must be a dozen of them—but all those I tried were locked.” I shut up for a minute, thinking and wondering whether she’d believe me. “I’d never seen the big guy before, and I haven’t seen him since. But I know damned well he did it.”
When I’d finished, she wanted to know if I’d used tools on the doors, an axe or something like that. I said no. What good would it do? Just make the big guy mad at me, and we knew he’d kill.
“Could you show me the passage?”
I tried to say sure. You know how that came out.
“If the doors won’t open, you and I will force one.”
Which is pretty much what we did.
Saying it like that makes it sound simple and easy, but it wasn’t. In the first place, I did just about all the work while she supervised. In the second, I had to scare up—or get her to buy—my tools. By the time we had the first door open, I had a pry-bar, a drill, an axe, and some other stuff. The first two I got out of the tool chest on the boat. The rest I had to buy with Katrine’s money. When she said she was sorry the door was so tough, I told her that the last door like this I’d seen was steel. This wood was hard and thick and bound with iron straps, but steel would have been a ton worse.
I tried to sound cocky through all this, but really I was worried half-sick. Those steel doors had been put there by one of us, and I was pretty sure I knew who it had been. These doors had been put there by people from the other side.
How did I know that? Simple, everything showed it. Those others had not been much different from the lid of a strongbox or the door of a safe. This one was hardwood and the wood wasn’t ponticwood, oak, walnut, or any other wood I knew, wood as hard and heavy as iron and so thick the boards made me think of timbers; its four hinges were two-piece (meaning no separate hinge pins), a design I’d never seen before. The screws that held them had five-sided heads and no slots.
So had Dr. Fevre hired himself a carpenter and had that door put in? No way! Colette Coldbrook’s dad had put in those other steel doors; these doors were from the other side. We had gone through those first ones and messed around in somebody else’s world; somebody else was coming through these to mess around in ours. I was one of the natives he was studying, or maybe just one of the natives he was less than eager to meet. It was a concept I had a tough time accepting, but I knew it was the truth.
After an hour or so of hard work, Katrine wanted to know whether I was sniffing or just breathing hard. I explained that I was doing both.
“Just what do you mean by that, Ern?” She sounded as though she were really interested.
“Sniffing because the air coming in smells different and good. You want to fill your lungs with it.”
She came over and sampled it herself. “Not like sea air,” she said.
I agreed.
“Have you ever smelled jungle air, Mr. Smithe?”
“I don’t believe I have.”
“It smells of leafy green things growing and growing, and rich damp mold that is heaven to plants. This isn’t like that.” She went quiet.
“Or like the sea, you said.”
“Right. This smells empty, or almost empty. Sun and leaves.”
I was glad she had pinned it down for me. I said, “Sort of like jungle air, only not warm or wet.”
“You said you’d never smelled that.”
“I haven’t, but I’ve read about it. I know what it’s like, or anyway I think I d
o.”
I had been prying at the boards, and a minute later one of them broke, letting me see in.
It took me a couple of blinks to sort out what I was seeing. The room was round and almost empty; no ceiling, just a funnel-shaped roof with no smoke-hole at the top. After that I tried to figure out the walls: they were dark brown wood with whitish stuff in the vertical cracks between the boards that might have been caulk or plaster or almost anything. No windows, but an open doorway with thick walls and bright sunlight showing through it.
“Are you going out there?” She was pushing past me.
I shook my head. “No way.”
“Why not?”
“Somebody doesn’t want us to. The door I broke was there to stop us. They won’t like it if we go outside.”
Katrine was quiet for a minute; then she said, “I’m going and you’re coming with me.”
“No way!” This time I made it just as solid as I could. “No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are. Bring that axe.”
I told her to go to hell.
“We’re going out there, both of us.” That was the first time I’d seen her pocket rocket; now I saw it, head-on.
“Each missile carries a pinch of high explosive. It goes off inside you.”
I told her I knew that.
“Fine. Go in there or you’ll find out how it feels. Bring the axe.”
I wanted to tell her she wouldn’t do it, but the words never got out of my throat. Her eyes said she’d shoot me as soon as I said she wouldn’t, and she was fully human and a Continental cop. Who was going to arrest her for smoking a reclone? Nobody!
I stepped inside, and after I’d caught my breath I went over to a window. Behind me she muttered, “Shakes you up.”
I wanted to say it did, every time; but I had sense enough to swallow it. Besides, just going to that window and looking around gave me a dozen other things to think about.
Over my shoulder Katrine said, “No violent storms here.” It was close to a whisper, and I looked back at her.
“High winds would blow down these trees, so no trees or twisted trees no bigger than bushes. That’s how it is with us.”
I hadn’t known that.
“These trees are bigger than…”
She had paused; I just waited.
“Do you know where we are, Mr. Smithe?”
“In a useless kind of way, yes.”
“Tell me!”
“We’re on the Earth-type planet of some other sun. Next you’re going to ask me how I know.”
“No. I’d ask you why you think so, but I can guess the reasons. That doesn’t mean I’m buying the idea.”
“Your doubting doesn’t change the fact.”
Katrine caught up with me. From then on we walked side by side. “I take it you’ve been here before?”
I shook my head.
“But you know anyway.”
“Right.” I nodded.
“Well, I don’t; but I’ll keep it in mind. How do we get home?”
“Just turn around and walk back through the door.”
I started to turn, and she caught my arm. “Wait up, Mr. Smithe! The man who murdered Dr. Fevre came from here? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yes. He did.”
“And presumably he came back here, went home.”
I saw where that was going and shrugged.
“A big man wearing a pointed cap, you said.”
“It wasn’t a pointed cap. It was more like a helmet, only with earflaps.”
“Right. Now tell me something, else, Mr. Smithe. Why did someone come from here into—into the place where we live and kill Dr. Fevre?”
“Maybe Dr. Fevre came in here first and did something people here didn’t like—killed one of them or ticked off the wrong person.”
There was more after that, but none of it is worth writing down.
16
AMONG THE LEAVES
When she had asked half a dozen more questions and I had explained that I had no idea, we looked out of a window together. Sure, I should’ve gone down the steps with or without her; but I wanted that missile pistol with me. If she’d have given it to me, I’d have left her behind and walked away whistling. As it was, I felt I’d have to take it from her cold, dead hands. Maybe I could have gotten behind her and choked her, only the consequences of that looked really bad if I stopped before she died, and they could have been even worse if I had killed her. (Not that I was sure I could bring myself to do it.) Should I leave her body here, so the big guy who shot Dr. Fevre would know straight off that I was a murderer too?
Shove it back through the door where somebody from our boat would find it?
We groped and stumbled down the dark wooden stairway that wound down the inside of the hollow tree I still thought of as a building. I kept expecting to run into somebody, but we didn’t. When we finally got to a door, I said, “From what I saw up there, this area is full of trees and brush. Are we going to try to find our way through them?”
Katrine didn’t bother to look back at me. “There must be somebody here.”
“There is,” I said. “We are.” I wasn’t hoping for a laugh, which was a good thing because I didn’t get one.
If you’ve never explored a whole new landscape, you might think there isn’t much to see. Really, I think it depends on what interests you.
Suppose you’re really interested in sailboats, like Audrey. If you come across a new boat, not exactly like anything you’ve seen before, it’s going to take you an hour or more before you know the ropes—how the standing rigging’s set up, and how the halyards are—plus why they’re like that, what the crew can do from on deck and what somebody will have to climb here or there to take care of.
All right, an innocent little path on another planet can be ten times worse. This gray-brown one was rounded the way they do roads so the rain will run off to the sides. That was the first thing I noticed. It seemed like there were woods on either side, trees so big their branches met high up over the path, making it shady, although little bright spots here and there showed that the day was sunny way up past the highest leaves. I took in all that right off, maybe ten minutes before I nearly killed Katrine.
Even today I don’t like to think about that part. First let me say I never meant to. She started to slip, and I snatched at her and she must have thought I was trying to push her off, because she went for her pistol. I grabbed her hand before she could shoot me and got my finger into the space behind the trigger. That kept her from firing; she couldn’t move the trigger back far enough. Twice I came too close to the edge and the round side of the limb almost sent me stumbling off backward. Then she did. I wrenched her arm, catching the barrel with my free hand. She must have let go, because she stumbled back too far—so far she couldn’t stop.
It was quiet up there after that, just a soft whisper from the leaves, so I heard her fall even though I never actually heard her hit the ground. Twigs snapped and popped, the noises fading out. Like I said, I didn’t hear her hit bottom, and it seemed to me she might be alive, probably badly hurt, somewhere down below.
Before that I hadn’t ever handled a launcher pistol, the thing a lot of people call a pocket rocket; but I found the safety in half a minute or less. It looked to me like it was off, so I moved it to hide the bright little stone. After that I sort of aimed it up and tried to pull the trigger. It wouldn’t budge.
So I fooled around with it, pushing that safety up and down and got disgusted with myself. Not just disgusted, but good and mad. The next time I didn’t bother to aim, just tried to strangle it when I pulled the trigger. There was a whoosh that ended in a thud, then a sound like a blow from a hammer. Another limb, one so far away that it was almost out of sight, trembled and sagged, its heartwood breaking with enough noise that I could hear it grind and snap.
All of a sudden, I was scared.
What if Katrine were dead, lying way down there on the ground? Would I be a murderer?
Maybe she was just hurt pretty badly? Could I go off and leave her? She hadn’t been a real enemy, just a lady cop trying to do her duty.
By the time I had thought about all that, I was at the trunk and scrambling down the rough bark. It was good about providing footholds and handholds, but pretty often they broke under my weight. That was less fun than it sounds like. I just about fell a dozen times.
Then I was almost down, and I could see Katrine lying on the moss, not close but not so far away that it was hard to spot her.
I started to climb down the rest of the way, finding footholds in the rough bark. I was tired, and about halfway down I stopped to rest and think.
Suppose Dr. Fevre had come here. The way it looked to me, the guy who killed him had come to our world with a mission, had done it, and had gone home as soon as it was over.
So justice, maybe. Or plain old revenge. It could even be that he’d had Dr. Fevre mixed up with somebody else. Until I knew more I had no way of judging. Our door had been in Adah Fevre’s house. The big guy’s was in some kind of weird wooden temple high up in the biggest tree ever.
That got me wondering about the doors’ locations. The steel door up on the top floor of the Coldbrook house made sense because it was close to the pile that powered it. I decided this one might be too, I just hadn’t looked in there.
I started looking around for it, and that was when it hit me. All my life I’d lived in two dimensions. Oh, sure, you were on the bottom shelf and somebody else was on top, on the highest shelf; but that was kid stuff. The forest floor I was seeing was more of the same; only when we went down from the library building I could turn around and look back at the place we’d come out of, windows showing you where the floors were, window after window in a long, shining stripe that went clear to the top.
How do you think of Trouble? I usually picture it as a tall, dark somebody walking around behind me and waiting for his chance to screw things up. As I worked my way down the trunk I couldn’t get away from the thought that Trouble looked a heck of a lot like me. Most of the trouble I’ve had in my life I’ve made myself. I should have gone back through the door right off, and I had known it. Here I was climbing down into trouble freely and on my own. I should have said to heck with her, shut the door behind me, and bolted it as tight as I could.
