Innocents Aboard

by Gene Wolfe

  “I wish I’d seen her.” The young man might not have heard him.

  “You had to. She was right beside you. In the, you know, the lightning flashes I could see her better than I can see you right now. I wanted to ask who she was.”

  “Scylla.” That was the bird. And not the bird.

  “I didn’t see her,” the young man declared, “and in fact, I don’t believe you. She was beside me, when the bird was on my shoulder, and you were running up behind us?”

  He sensed rather than saw Moonrat’s nod.

  “Well, what happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. She wasn’t with you when I got to you.”

  The young man shook himself, perhaps from cold, possibly in unconscious imitation of the bird. “We’re wasting time.”Where does Serval live? I want to get this over.”

  “I’ll show you.” Moonrat stepped out into the rain once more. “I’m going to go with you, and—and help out, if that’s all right.”

  They pounded on the door; and when Serval answered it, the young man put his hook around Serval’s neck and jerked him out into the storm, then knocked him down with the steel back of it. A woman screamed inside. A moment after Moonrat had closed the door, they heard the clank of a heavy bar dropped into place.

  “You killed Lily,” the young man told Serval. “You raped her, and then you killed her.” He had passed his gaff to Moonrat, and he held Moonrat’s slug gun so that Serval could see the pit of oblivion that was its muzzle.

  “Shoot,” Moonrat whispered, and the bird took up the word, croaking, “Shoot! Shoot!”

  Serval himself said nothing, wiping mud from his eyes and cheeks, then rising slowly and cautiously. He had been holding a poker when the young man’s hook had caught him, but that had vanished into the mud.

  “Since you killed her,” the young man said, “I think it only fitting that you help me give her a proper burial. If you do it, I suppose it’s conceivable that I may not be able to bring myself to kill you.”

  Serval cleared his throat and spat, taking a half step backward toward the door, as if he expected it to open behind him.

  “Shoot!” the bird urged, and lightning lit the street. Serval looked at Moonrat, whose gray steel blade seemed almost to glow in the flash.

  “Refuse,” the young man urged him as the thunder died away. “Why don’t you refuse and make it easy for me?”

  “I got to go in and get my clothes.” Save for mud that the rain was quickly washing from his body, Serval was naked.

  “No.” The young man shook his head. “Do you refuse?”

  “I’ll do it. What do I have to do?”

  “How did you dispose of Lily’s body? You seem to have told the rest of the town, so tell me.”

  “There’s a pond in the woods.” Serval’s voice was husky, his eyes upon the muzzle of the slug gun, though it was almost invisible in the dark and the rain. “We threw it in, then we threw rocks and stuff at it till it sank.”

  “Take us there,” the young man said.

  “If I do—”

  “Take us!”

  When the town was behind them, and the roar of countless raindrops upon uncounted millions of leaves filled their ears, Serval said, “I didn’t kill her. You know?”

  The young man said nothing.

  “You know?” Serval repeated. “I didn’t have her neither.”

  “You said you did last night in the Keg and Barrel.”

  “In the cock and bull, you mean.” Serval actually sounded chastened. “I couldn’t say I didn’t, you know?”

  “Bad man!” the bird declared damply, and clacked its bill for emphasis.

  The young man remained silent; so did Moonrat.

  “Listen. If I’d had her, would I pay that little slut Foxglove tonight? That was who it was with me back there in my place. You must have heard her.”

  Moonrat urged Serval forward with the butt of the young man’s gaff.

  “I tried, all right? I tried, and I held one leg for the other culls. But she was about dead already, ’cause somebody’d put his knife in her, you know? So I couldn’t. It wasn’t, you know, fun no more.”

  “Had it ever been fun for Lily?” the young man asked him. “Say yes, and die.”

  Serval did not.

  “Who were those others? You said you held one of her legs for them. Who were they?”

  Moonrat said loudly, “You might as well tell him. They’re already dead, both of them. He killed them.”

  Lightning showed the rain-whipped pool gleaming like a mirror through the trees.

  “Why do I have to I tell him, then? He knows.”

  “Yes,” the young man said. “I know.” He fingered the cracked fore-end of the slug gun. “Give him my gaff, Moonrat.”

  Moonrat passed the pole and its cruel-looking hook to Serval, saying, “Here. This did for Marten.”

  The young man nodded. “Go to the water. You threw Lily into it. Now you can fish her out.”

  Serval went, and the bird flew after him, alighting upon the half-submerged log it remembered. The rain was no longer quite so violent, it decided; still it longed for the heat and cheer of the tavern fire, and the dry and smoky room with food on half a dozen tables. “Here girl,” it told Serval loudly. “Girl wet.”

  Serval looked at it incredulously, then returned to groping with the hooked gaff in a part of the pool far from its perch.

  “Girl here!” the bird insisted. “Wet girl!” Its bill snapped with impatience. “Here! Here! Bird say!”

  Stepping into the shallows, the young man poked Serval’s back with the muzzle of the slug gun. “Go over there and have a look.”

  Sullenly, Serval waded out to the bird’s half-submerged log.

  “Good! Good!” Excited, the bird flapped its wings, hopping up from the log itself to a stub that protruded from it. “Girl here!”

  The steel hook splashed, and the pole stirred the black waters of the pool. For the young man waiting upon the bank, the seconds plodded past like so many dripping pack mules, laboring mules carrying the universe to eternity, bit by bit.

  By a final effort of the dying storm, lightning struck a dead tree on the far side of the pool, exploding it like a bomb and setting its ruins ablaze; and Serval screamed, turned, and fled, splashing through the shallows and slipping in the mud, but virtually invisible to all but the bird, who squawked and whistled, and whooped, “Man run! Bad man! Shoot! Shoot!”

  The young man jerked back the slide of the slug gun, pulling harder than necessary because of his inexperience, then ramming it forward again, hearing the bolt thud and snick into place as it pushed a fresh cartridge into the chamber and locked up.

  As if by the gun’s own volition, the butt was tight against the hollow of his shoulder. He fired at a shadow and a sound, the flash from the muzzle lighting up the rain-dotted pool as the lighting had, and vanishing as quickly.

  Serval shrieked with pain, and the young man nodded to himself, cycling the slide once more while he wondered vaguely just how many cartridges a slug gun held, and how many had been in this one when Moonrat had given it to him.

  “You got him!” Moonrat slapped him on the back.

  “I doubt that he’s dead,” the young man said. “I couldn’t see him that well. In fact, I couldn’t see him very well at all.”

  “Bird see!”

  The young man nodded to the bird as though it were a person. “No doubt you did. Your eyes are much better than my own, I’m sure.”

  “Eyes good!”

  “He eats them,” the young man told Moonrat conversationally. “He ate Marten’s, I believe, and from what you said, I would imagine that he ate Bushdog’s, too.”

  Moonrat said, “I wonder what got into him. Into Serval, I mean.”

  “See girl,” the bird informed them. “Arm girl.”

  The young man nodded, mostly to himself. “Lily’s body is there. It has to be. He must have brought it to the surface just as the lightning struck. It
was too much for his nerves.”

  “I don’t think you killed him either.” Moonrat’s knife was out. “If you didn’t, I’ll finish him for you.”

  “Wait just a moment.” The young man caught him by the elbow.

  “You better let me go, Starling.” Moonrat tried to shake free of his grasp. “He may not be dead.”

  “I’m sure he’s not.” Smoky flames from the burning tree illuminated a smiling face in which nothing at all could be read. “If he were dead the bird would know, and it would have gone for his eyes.”

  “No dead,” the bird confirmed.

  “But he’s unarmed and wounded, and he’s seen her face, down there in the water. I’ll get him tomorrow. Or the day after that, or perhaps the day after that. Possibly Lily’s brothers may get him first. Her brothers or her father. He’ll realize that, when he’s had time to think. He’ll run, or barricade himself in his house with a slug gun. But we’ll get him.”

  “I’ll get him now,” Moonrat declared.

  “No.” The young man released Moonrat’s arm and held out his hand. “Give me your knife.”

  Moonrat hesitated.

  “Give it to me. I want to see it.”

  Reluctantly, Moonrat handed it over. A flip of the young man’s hand sent it spinning away to raise a splash in the middle of the pool.

  “Now I want you to find Lily and bring her out,” the young man said. “I think he dropped my gaff. The weight of the hook will have sunk it, but the handle will be standing straight up in the water, or nearly. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “Wet girl,” the bird explained.

  Moonrat started to speak, bit it back, and substituted, “All right if I take off my boots?”

  Leveling the slug gun, the young man shook his head.

  “Have knife,” the bird announced. It had not intended to announce that; but it was true, and the bird was glad afterward that it had said it.

  “In his boot.” The young man nodded and smiled, smelling the rain and the wood smoke from the burning tree, and still practically unaware of the scene this combination of odors would invariably summon from memory as the years passed.

  “In boot!”

  “It may remain there. Go get her, Moonrat.” The young man’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Go now.”

  Moonrat waded out, ankle deep, knee deep, and at last waist deep in the pool. After half a minute he found the gaff and held it up for the young man to see. By that time it had nearly stopped raining, although the sky was still dark.

  “Moonrat.”

  “What is it?” Moonrat’s voice was sullen, his face expressionless.

  “The end of the hook is very sharp. Try not to stab her with it, please.”

  If Moonrat nodded, it was too small and slight a nod to be seen.

  When Lily’s body lay on the sodden leaves, the young man ordered Moonrat back into the pool, leaned his slug gun against a white willow, and covered Lily with his tunic. She had been small, and his tunic reached—mercifully—from the top of her forehead to a point just below her naked loins.

  When the young man picked up his slug gun again, Moonrat asked, “Can I get out of here now?”

  The young man said nothing, wondering again whether there was a cartridge in the chamber. He pressed the slide lock and opened the action a little, but the faint light from the east was not sufficient to let him see the cartridge, if there was one. His fingertips found it, and he closed the action again.

  “I won’t go after Serval if you don’t want me to.” Moonrat took a tentative step toward the still-smoldering tree.

  “I thought you might want to tell me about it,” the young man said. His tone was almost conversational.

  “What?”

  “About raping Lily, and about killing her.”

  Moonrat said nothing.

  “Bad man!” the bird announced virtuously.

  “You couldn’t be convicted in court unless Serval talks, and that may be the chief reason I’m going to kill you here and now. It may be. I can’t be sure.”

  “I didn’t.”

  There had been a tremor in Moonrat’s voice, and something in the young man sang at the sound of it. “There were four of you. There had to be, because neither Marten nor Bushdog had scratched faces. Shall I tell you about that?”

  The bird urged, “Man talk!”

  “All right, I will. Serval said that he held a leg while the others raped her. Someone else, clearly, held her other leg, and there must also have been a third man holding her hands. Otherwise there would have been scratches, as I said. I got a good look at Marten when he was sitting at a table with a candle on it, and an even better look at Bushdog in the tavern. And neither of them had scratches or bruises. So there were four of you. At least four. Now do you want to tell me about it?”

  Moonrat said, “No.”

  “I’m not going to let you pray or plead, or anything of that foolish kind. But if you’ll confess—if you’ll tell me in detail, and truthfully, just what you and the rest did and why you did it—you’ll have those added minutes of life.”

  “No,” Moonrat repeated.

  “Man talk!” This time the bird was addressing Moonrat.

  “Someone might come by while you’re talking. You might be saved. You should think about that.”

  Moonrat was silent, possibly thinking.

  “You were very, very anxious to help me—”

  “I’m your friend!”

  The young man shrugged and raised his slug gun, squinting down the barrel at the front sight and a trifle surprised to discover that there was light enough for him to see it. “You’re an acquaintance. You came to me—so did Caracal—to tell me that Serval had been boasting about … about what you did. But you knew a lot more than Caracal did, or at least a lot more than he told me.” The young man lowered the slug gun. Not yet.

  “I said what Serval’d said.” Moonrat sounded less than confident.

  “Bad man!” The bird was cocksure. “Shoot! Shoot!”

  “Soon,” the young man promised, and spoke to Moonrat again. “Caracal only said that he had boasted of doing it. You said he had named Marten and Bushdog, and you even knew where they had disposed of Lily’s body, and were able to tell me accurately enough for me to find the place—this pond. Do you want to hear some more?”

  Moonrat shook his head, and the young man noted with some slight surprise he stood shoulder deep in the water—if indeed he were standing.

  “Well, I do. I’m marshaling all my arguments, you see, so I can pardon myself afterward for having killed you, even though I’ve killed Marten and Bushdog already. Or perhaps I’m merely looking for a reason to let you run like Serval. You’re planning to duck under the water when I’m about to fire, aren’t you?”

  Moonrat shook his head.

  “No. Of course not. Well, we’ll soon find out. Where was I?”

  “Say name,” the bird prompted him; and it seemed to Moonrat, although only very briefly, that the woman of many arms whom he had seen earlier was standing in the water beside the log upon which the bird perched.

  “I had finished with that.” The young man was silent for a moment, thinking. “When I looked through the window of the house where I found Marten, I saw Lacewing and his brother Locust, and Lacewing’s girl Gillyflower. They were sitting around a table talking to Marten, or perhaps playing some gambling game. There was a slug gun with a cracked fore-end in a corner. I assumed that was Lacewing’s, and even imagined him coming out and killing me with it. He didn’t, but later you gave me that same gun, so that I would kill Bushdog.”

  “I was trying to help you,” Moonrat muttered, “so that doesn’t prove anything.”

  “I didn’t say I could prove anything,” the young man replied. His tones were reasonable, his eyes wholly insane. “But then I don’t have to prove, do I? I know.” He sighted along the barrel. The pool was awash in gray light now, and tendrils of mist snaked upward from its surface.


  “I wanted to be friends,” Moonrat repeated stubbornly.

  “You wanted someone else to commit your murders,” the young man told him, “and you found me. Serval was talking, and even if he hadn’t named you—or Marten or Bushdog—you knew that Lily’s brothers would beat your name out of him. Then you would die. So you gave me their names and told me where her body was, thus establishing what we pettifoggers call a presumption of innocence. Where were you when I hooked Marten? Relieving yourself?”

  “Watch out,” the bird muttered, and snapped its bill. More forcefully it repeated, “Watch out!” Moonrat was straightening up or standing up, his torso emerging from the water until the ripples were scarcely higher than his waist.

  “Before I killed Bushdog he cried out for help,” the young man said. “Kob’s tavern was full because of the fair, and I thought he was calling on the drinkers in there. But you were watching, at least in the beginning, and he had seen you and was calling to you, pleading for you to help him before I took his life. You’d been his friend, and he thought you’d come to his rescue. On whom will you call, Moonrat?”

  Moonrat’s hand and Moonrat’s knife leaped from the water like fish, and the slug gun boomed.

  The knife flashed past the young man’s ear to thud against a tree behind him.

  Moonrat’s throw continued, his arm preceding his face, until he lay, as it were, upon the dark, mist-shrouded water, his legs still sunk by the weight of his boots. The bird left its log to fly out to the corpse and perch upon the back of its head, claws gripping its hair.

  “No eyes for you,” the young man said. “Get off there.”

  “All right.” The bird regarded him with an intelligence that seemed almost human and flew to the overhanging limb of a threadwood tree. “No eat.”

  Recalling his sandwich, the young man took it from his pocket and unwrapped it again. The bread was torn and crumbled, but the meat remained largely intact. “Here, you can have this. But no eyes, understand?”

  “Good, good!”

  The bird was eyeing the sandwich, and the young man stepped away from it. “Take it and go. Take whatever you want—but after that you have to go back to wherever it is you come from, or keep on going to wherever you were going when you saw me. Understand?”