Innocents Aboard

by Gene Wolfe

  No one spoke.

  “I’ll see to it that you’re welcomed everywhere.”

  The old woman said, “If we’re really going to go to a coronation …”

  “I can find a donkey for you,” the richest man told her, “and I will. You couldn’t keep up with these two fellows for an hour. I’m sure you realize it, and they’re going to have to realize it, too.”

  She was looking at the taller. “Weren’t you the one who came to tell me about my son?”

  He nodded.

  “I knew I’d seen you somewhere. Yes, that was it. You don’t look a day older.”

  The richest man coughed apologetically. “You’re not relatives of hers, I take it.”

  “No,” the taller said. “We’re messengers.”

  “Well, you’re welcome just the same. I hope you’ll stay until the new moon, at least.”

  “We will leave when she has eaten as much as she wants,” the smaller told him.

  “Tonight?” It was insane. He thought the smaller might be joking.

  “Oh, I’ve had all I want,” the old woman said. “It doesn’t take much to fill me up these days.”

  The taller said, “Then we should go.”

  “I want to thank you,” the old woman told the richest man. “What you’ve done for me tonight was very kind. I’ll always remember it.”

  He wished that it had been a great deal more, and tried to say that he was sorry that he had never befriended her during all the years she had lived in the village, and that it would be otherwise in the future.

  She looked at the taller when he said these things, and the taller nodded assent.

  “You’re a messenger,” she said. “You said so. Just a messenger.”

  The taller nodded again. “A servant.”

  “Sent to get me.” A shadow, as of fear, crossed her face. “You’re not the messenger of death?”

  “No,” the taller told her. “I’m not.”

  “What about him?” She indicated the smaller.

  “We should go now.” The taller stood as he spoke.

  The richest man felt that all three had forgotten him. More diffidently than he had intended, he asked whether he might go with them.

  “To the coronation?” The taller shook his head. “You may not. It’s by invitation only.”

  “Just to the edge of the village.”

  The taller smiled and nodded. “Since we are there now, yes, you may.”

  “You’ll tell others,” the smaller said when they were outside. “That’s good. Because you’re rich, they’ll have to listen to you. But some won’t believe you, because you’re dishonest. That should be perfect.”

  “I am not dishonest,” the richest man said.

  They walked on.

  “I’ve done some dishonest things, perhaps. Those things were dishonest, but not I.”

  The sun had set behind the hills, but its light still filled the sky. A breeze sprang up, swaying the lofty palm at the edge of his new pasture. The taller had been walking on the old woman’s right; now the smaller took her left arm as if to assist her.

  “Right here, I think,” the smaller said. “There’s a bit of a climb, but you won’t find it tiring.”

  The taller spoke to the richest man. “This is where we part company. We wish you well.”

  The old woman stopped when he said that, and when she turned back to face the richest man, he saw that she was standing upon nothing, that she and they had climbed, as it appeared, a hummock of air. “Good-bye,” she said. “Thank you again. Please tell everyone I’ll miss them terribly, and that I’ll come back just as soon as I can.”

  The richest man managed to nod, became aware that he was gaping, and closed his mouth.

  “I suppose we ought to go on now,” she said to the taller, and he nodded.

  The richest man stood watching them follow a path he could not see up a hill he could not see, a hill that he could not see, he thought, because it had no summit. Only hills with summits were visible to his eyes. He had not known that before. When they had gone so high that the sun’s light found them again, they halted; and he heard the taller say, “Do you want to take a last look? This would be a good place to do it.”

  “It’s really quite little, isn’t it?” The old woman’s voice carried strangely. “It’s precious, and yet it’s not important.”

  “It used to be important,” the smaller said; and it seemed to the richest man that it was the breeze that spoke.

  The old woman laughed a girl’s laugh. “Perhaps we’d better hurry. Do you know, I feel like running.”

  “We’ll run if you like,” the taller told her, “but we can’t promise to run as fast as you can.”

  “We’ll just walk briskly,” the richest man heard the old woman say, “but it had better be very briskly. We wouldn’t want to be late for the coronation.”

  “Oh, we won’t be.” (The richest man could not be sure which of her companions had replied.) “I can guarantee that. The coronation won’t begin until you get there.”

  Night came as the richest man watched them climb higher; and at last one of his servants came, too, and asked what he was looking at.

  “Right there.” The richest man pointed. “Look there, and look carefully. What do you see?”

  The servant looked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again; and at last he said, “Three stars, master.”

  “Exactly,” the richest man said. “Exactly.”

  Together they returned to the old woman’s house. There was a great deal of food still on the table, and the richest man told his servant to fetch the cook and the scullion, to gather everything up, and to return it to his kitchen.

  “Is this your house now, master?” his servant asked.

  “Certainly not.” The richest man paused, thinking. “But I’m going to take care of it for her while she’s away.”

  The servant left, and the richest man found the figs, selected a fig, and ate it. Some people would want to tear this house down, and time and weather would do it for them, if they were allowed to. He would see that they did not: that nothing was stolen or destroyed. That necessary repairs were made. He would keep it for her. It would be his trust, and suddenly he was filled with a satisfaction near to love at being thus trusted.

  Pocketsful of Diamonds

  At supper, Aunt Mildred rapped her glass with a fork until all five children stopped to listen. “We will be welcoming new arrivals tomorrow.” She beamed at the children, hoping for at least one smile in return, but got none. “Their names are David Apple and Candi Cotin, and that’s all I can tell you about them until I’ve had a chance to talk to them.”

  Danny passed a bite of sweet potato to his sister Debbie, who had just passed him a sizable bit of her meatloaf. Debbie was a year older, and as he gave her his morsel of sweet potato, Danny’s look loudly declared that it was up to her. Debbie was looking at him already. You’re the man of the family, Debbie’s look reminded him.

  From the opposite side of the table, LaBelinda voiced the question that was on the mind of every child present. “Where they goin’ to sleep?”

  “We must welcome them both, and warmly,” Aunt Mildred declared.

  “Debbie ’n Danny got their big ol’ room all to theyselfs ’cause they’s sister ’n brother.” LaBelinda shot them a look compounded of envy and dislike.

  “I’m glad you mentioned that,” said Aunt Mildred, who was not. “You see, Taffy—that is what David prefers to be called, according to the paper they gave me—and Candi are brother and sister, too. There was a divorce and some changes in name. You understand, I’m sure.”

  The children nodded. Divorces and changes in name were things they understood very well indeed.

  “Well, Ah think …” LaBelinda began.

  Luis, who hardly ever spoke, touched her arm and gestured graphically toward Danny and Debbie. “Dere,” said Luis. “Weeth dem.”

  Later that night, while Danny lay in bed beside his sister,
he found himself back in the kitchen of the little brick house on Second Street. Mom and Dad were kissing, standing up with their arms around each other in the middle of the room; and he knew that he should not make any noise or push between them to get hugged the way he had when he was small. But he knew also that when he went out of the kitchen something terrible would be waiting in the vast darkness beyond its glowing circle of light, a circle that spun around and tilted as he watched, yellow light from the overhead fixture, blue light from a burner on the gas stove, and red light from the telltale eye of the electric percolator, all turning and turning.

  He blinked, and Debbie was shaking him. “Look! Look! You’ve got to see this.”

  Danny sat up rubbing his eyes, and Debbie was already back at the window, and the light coming through the window was not the colorless glare of the mercury-vapor lamp at the top of the steel pole but was red and green and yellow and blue, and even pink and orange. Then he was standing beside her, and there was something new and wonderful where the dirty, cracked walls of the old packing plant usually were.

  From their window they got out onto the little porch roof, Debbie going first because she was oldest; and from the little porch roof they climbed down one of the ornamental iron pillars that held it up, Danny going first because he was bravest, and the man of the family.

  “Now normally, folks,” declared the tall man in the red-and-white striped sportcoat who stood on the platform at the gate, “admission is a mere one dollar and seventy-five cents for adults, fifty cents for children, and babes in arms free. Senior citizen discount of one dollar even.” He was addressing Danny and Debbie as if they were a noisy crowd. “But I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do.”

  “We haven’t got any money.” Danny thought it best to establish this at once.

  Suddenly the tall man on the platform knelt, pushing back his yellow straw hat. “Your pockets are full of diamonds,” he whispered to Danny. At once he rose again and continued as though there had been no such whisper. “For tonight—and only for tonight—admission will be free. Absolutely free! To one and all.”

  Danny wanted to show the tall man that there were no pockets as well as no diamonds in his worn flannel pajamas, but did not know how to do it.

  “Now normally,” the tall man twirled a slender bamboo cane, “normally we do not provide the promised free refreshment tickets to those lucky patrons who pay no admission. To babes in arms, for example. To those who have received the passes generously distributed by our management and those whose admissions have been magnanimously paid by their employers at a deep discount. But not tonight! Tonight is special. Tonight is golden, and tonight is pro-foundly abnormal. Let me tell you what we’re gonna do. Tonight only, we’re gonna provide the promised free refreshment tickets along with your free admissions!”

  Bowing, he presented Debbie with a large piece of dark green cardboard, then handed another, brighter piece to Danny. A moment later, his bamboo cane was propelling them through the gate.

  SKYROCKET

  Rides—Free

  announced a large sign. An arrow pointed in the direction they were going. “That sounds fun,” Debbie said, “and it doesn’t cost anything. We could go on that.”

  Danny was examining the piece of green cardboard the tall man at the gate had given him. “We could find the place where the free treats are, too.”

  “Step right up, kids,” a new voice invited them. “They’re all inside, and the last nine are free.”

  The speaker was a middle-aged woman in a purple dress, and she was speaking not to Danny and Debbie alone but to a little knot of very ordinary-looking people of all ages gathered in front of her platform.

  But if the people in front of her platform were ordinary-looking, the people depicted on the canvas banners behind it were anything but.

  “Just one diamond alone before our show’s shown,” chanted the woman in the purple dress. “Just one’s all it takes, folks. That’s why we call it the Ten-in-One. You pay once, and for that one measly little payment you get to see all ten shows. There’re all alive except the dead one, and she’s still dancing. Okay, who’s first?”

  A thin man in a well-worn denim shirt took something small and gleaming from a trousers pocket, handed it to the woman in the purple dress, and was admitted.

  “All alive,” the woman repeated; a moaning wind swayed and billowed the painted canvases, making them appear so. There was a monstrously fat woman and a sinister snake woman, a fire eater and a sword swallower, an alligator boy, a dead woman in a pink tutu, and a man with two noses, two mouths, and four eyes. Gaily colored lights glided across them all, rose, ruby, berylline, heliotrope, and canary.

  A face that seemed not entirely human peeped around the curtain behind the woman in the purple dress, and the woman in the purple dress caught its owner by the arm and pulled her out. “This is Lobster Girl,” she explained, and she held up the lobster girl’s hand so that everyone could see it was indeed a pliers-like claw. “She eats children, but she never eats paid admissions, so you don’t have to worry. You never do, do you Vamp?”

  The lobster girl smiled, and her teeth were the teeth of a trap.

  A fat lady in a black dress laid her hand upon Debbie’s shoulder. It was a plump little hand in an immaculate white glove, and the fat lady smelled quite beautifully of lavender. “Wouldn’t you children like to see the show?” She smiled at Debbie, and then at Danny.

  Debbie shook her head.

  “We haven’t got any money,” Danny explained.

  “I have.” The fat lady displayed a neat black purse. “And I’d like to see a woman fatter than I am.” She laughed merrily. “Talk to her, too, if I could.”

  Dimly, Danny recalled a movie theater at which Dad had paid for four tickets. “Could we come with you?”

  Debbie shook her head again, violently this time.

  “You’ve been cautioned against child molesters, I’m sure,” the fat lady said. “Stranger danger? But if I introduce myself, and you introduce yourselves to me, I won’t be a stranger anymore, will I?” She held out her hand to Danny. “I’m Irma, and you are … ?”

  “Danny.”

  Solemnly, she and Danny shook hands; then the fat lady held out her hand to Debbie. “I’m Bertha, darling. And you are … ?”

  “You said your name was Irma,” Debbie protested.

  “Oh, I have a great many names,” the fat lady explained, “but I ask only one of you. You are … ?”

  “Debbie,” Danny supplied.

  The fat lady nodded and smiled. “Then come with me, Debbie and Danny, and we will see the show.”

  Danny took her hand, and she led him up to the woman in the purple dress while the lobster girl was dancing on all four claws, clattering around and around the platform and grinning over its edge at the people who gawked at her.

  “My name is Lily,” the fat woman told the woman in the purple dress, “and I would like to pay my own admission and the admissions of these two children in addition to my own.” She took three glittering stones from her neat black purse and held them out.

  “You’re going to pay for them?” The woman in the purple dress sounded dubious.

  “Yes, I am,” the fat lady assured her.

  Dubiously, the woman in the purple dress selected one of the glittering stones and held it up to the colored lights, which it transformed into purest crystal iridescence. “It’s not regular,” she said.

  “Suppose I were to hand one to each child. That would be regular, wouldn’t it?”

  The woman in the purple dress frowned. “No, that wouldn’t be regular at all.”

  “As you wish,” the fat lady said. “Come along, children.” Dropping the other two glittering stones back into her neat black purse and snapping it shut, she led Danny inside. For a second or two, Debbie watched them, trembling, before she ran to rejoin them.

  “This is Sheffield, our sword swallower,” announced a recorded voice. “Show them, Sheffield.”
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br />   The sword swallower was a tall, emaciated, sad-looking man with a very pale face. He rose from the inverted bucket on which he had been sitting as the recorded voice spoke, and held out for their inspection a beautiful straight sword with a polished, double-edged blade. “People think the blade slides into the handle,” he said, “but it does not”; his own voice was weak and tremulous, as colorless as his face. “You’re welcome to examine it, sir, or to run me through the body, if you wish.”

  Danny accepted the sword and felt that it was weighty with magic. “Wouldn’t you die?”

  There was a lengthy silence during which the sword swallower appeared to consider the matter. At last he said, “It isn’t terribly likely.”

  So timorously she could scarcely be heard, Debbie asked, “Are you really going to swallow it?”

  The sword swallower shook his head. “I will only put the blade down my throat and pull it out again, madam. There is no actual swallowing, no peristaltic action involved in what I do. Watch.”

  He threw back his head and held the gleaming blade poised above his face for a moment that called for (but did not get) trumpets. His mouth opened, though not widely, and the blade slowly descended, down and down, until it seemed that he must surely be spitted like a calf for roasting.

  At last the jeweled and gilded cross-guard touched his lips. He released the sword then and stood with arms outstretched, its gleaming hilt protruding from his mouth. Debbie clapped for him, the pattering of her small hands the only sound in the cavernous darkness of the show tent.

  Slowly, both of the sword swallower’s own thin and colorless hands reached for the hilt. More slowly still, he brought the sword up, an inch at a time. When it emerged at last, the point was red with blood.

  “Thank you.” He bowed to them, his right hand pressed to his stomach, his left still holding his sword. “Thank you all very much for your attention and applause.” There was a bloody froth at one corner of his mouth.