Authors: Gene Wolfe

Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Horror, #Romance, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure

An Evil Guest (41 page)

BOOK: An Evil Guest

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Klauser smiled. “For one who soars like the eagle. Yes, I do.”

“It will take a lot of hops, but Aquilia says we can do it. I forget how many, but a lot. Twenty-something. I’ve bought the fuel rods. I still have to send Dr. Chase an ethermail to tell him I’m coming.”

“What if he doesn’t want you to, Miss Casey?”

“He does. I had an ethermail from him before I bought my hopper. It’s just that I think his ethermail must be a reply to the one I’m going to send him today. Do you know about that?”

Klauser shook his head. “Nobody really knows about it.”

“I suppose. Anyway, Dr. Chase told me once. If I don’t send mine, his will have to be accounted for in some other way and it’s liable to get complicated. So I’ll send mine so I don’t have to worry.”

As Maria came in with tea and toast, Klauser murmured, “The distinctions we draw between past, present, and future are discriminations among illusions.”

“Really?” Cassie’s eyebrows shot up. “It sounds crazy.”

“Albert Einstein said that, and Einstein wasn’t crazy. Nor was he joking, Miss Casey. For us, the illusions seem terribly real. The robin another robin fights in a clean window seems terribly real to him, too.” Klauser accepted a cup half filled with steaming tea, to which Maria added sugar substitute.

“I can pour for myself,” Cassie told her, and watched with satisfaction as Maria left.

“It isn’t that she doesn’t like you,” Klauser said. “She’s just trying to do her duty.”

“Which would have included pouring hot tea in my lap. What should I take to Woldercan?”

“Women,” Klauser said slowly, “have monthly needs. You could use rags, and our great-great-grandmothers did, but if you would prefer not to . . .”

“I—well, I take a certain medicine. I don’t need tampons.”

“In that case, you should bring along a supply of the medicine. There’ll be a doctor at the embassy, and he’ll probably give you some if he has it.”

“Then again he might not. And he might not have any. I understand.” Cassie took a pen and pad from her purse and jotted a note. “A friend of mine’s a reporter. She tapes interviews, but she carries these, too. I’m starting to understand why.”

“I won’t talk about clothing. You’ll take too much, women always do. Take two warm dresses and one warm coat. The rest can be light stuff.”

She made another note.

“You can eat the same things the Wolders eat, and you’d better do that and learn to like it. You can’t possibly bring along enough food for a long stay. Are you staying long?”

“I hope so.”

“Then learn to eat their food. The things that look like worms aren’t worms, by the way. Have you ever eaten spaghetti squash?”

Cassie shook her head. “I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Too bad. The wormy things are vegetable, just like spaghetti squash. I like stinky cheese.”

“So do I.”

“Good! That will help. A lot of the food smells bad but tastes good. What weapons are you planning on taking?”

Cassie blinked. “You know, I hadn’t even thought of that. I used to carry a little automatic. . . .”

“If it’s still in a drawer somewhere, get it out and have a gunsmith check it over.”

“It’s gone. I—I shot a man. Does that bother you? This was during the storm, when—when . . .”

“When people we won’t name died. It was on vid. The storm, I mean, not the people. Those tissues are next to the tea tray. Did you shoot my friend?”

“Bill?” Cassie fumbled for the tissues. “Good gosh no! Bill was already d-dead.”

“Self-defense?”

“Yes. Yes, it was, Ambassador. But—but if I told you what he wanted me to do you’d think that I was crazy, and he’d have killed me if I wouldn’t do it.”

“None of my business. I shouldn’t have asked. Get another gun. You’ll get two, if you’re smart. Two guns that use the same ammunition. You won’t need a lot. Two hundred rounds will probably be enough.”

“The Wolders look like we do, don’t they? I’ve seen some on vid.”

“They do if you don’t look too closely.” Klauser nibbled a triangle of anchovy toast. “Frankly, they’ll be the least of your worries. They . . . well, sometimes they try to seduce human women.”

“But not women my age. Or women as homely as I am.”

“You’re not, Miss Casey, although you may think so. Have you always been so thin?”

She shook her head. “I used to be quite fat. A very nice man described
me as luscious once, but women thought I was fat. I’m a woman myself, so I did, too. Then I nearly starved after the storm. I’ve been trying to stay thin.”

Klauser snorted. “I wish you bad luck with it. Your genes will control your weight, unless you get as sick as I am or starve. I . . .”

“What is it?”

“I just thought of something, that’s all. Will you accept a gift from me, Miss Casey? A knickknack to remind you of me? It will do you no harm and please an old man mightily.”

“Of course I will, Ambassador. Thank you.”

“Take it to Woldercan. I’d like that. It won’t take up much space and it doesn’t weigh much, so bring it along. Please.”

Klauser drew breath. “Maria! Come here!”

Maria came, Klauser whispered urgently to her, and she left. “She’ll wrap it for you. Wrap it as a gift, which it is. You can open it when you get back home.”

“I promise not to peek.”

“Good.” Klauser coughed. “I’ve been talking about what you ought to take. That’s what you asked about, and I’ve done my best to stick with it. How you act, where you go and where you don’t . . . Those are a lot more important. May I talk about those?”

Cassie said, “I think you’d better.”

“Try the anchovy toast. Half is for you.”

Reluctantly, she picked up a triangle of toast. “I eat breakfast at a little place called the International House of Toast most mornings. I remember seeing this on the menu.”

“You should’ve tried it. Before we get into behavior, I ought to mention that the laws of physics aren’t exactly the same on Woldercan.”

Cassie nodded. “A thing I read on the net said that, too. It won’t bother me. I don’t know what the laws are here.”

“We used to believe they’d be the same everywhere.” Klauser paused, and for a moment he seemed to be looking far away. “That seems terribly naive these days.”

Cassie waited, and he said, “It can throw you off if you go up or down stairs fast. Take it slow until you’re used to things.”

“All right, I will.”

“Don’t go into the forests. No ifs, ands, or buts. Don’t go. Don’t even get close to one.”

Popping the last of the triangle into her mouth, Cassie made a note.

“If you absolutely have to go, take a couple of old hands with you. At least two. More would be better.”

“Got it.”

“There are some pretty awful things in those forests, and from time to time they come out. That’s why I advised you to bring two guns.”

“I will.” Cassie selected another triangle.

“Fine.” Klauser hesitated. “The Wolders sometime hybridize with lower animals. The results can be, well, nightmarish.”

Cassie nodded.

“If you go fishing don’t talk to any fish you catch. That’s very dangerous. Release them immediately or kill them immediately. One or the other. Don’t go fishing without an experienced companion. How do you like anchovy toast?”

“I like it a lot,” Cassie told him. “It makes me think of a time when I was the green goddess.”

K
LAUSER’S
gift was small, flat, and light. Cassie packed it, and did not open it until the engines were recharging after the fifth hop and she was getting ready for bed. Opened, it proved to be a picture. A younger William Reis than she had ever seen stood next to an older man of about the same height who must have weighed at least three hundred pounds.

When she tapped Reis’s image with her fingernail, he said, “I’m Bill Reis, the new ambassador to Woldercan, and I’d like to thank Ambassador Klauser for teaching me a great deal I needed to know, and for all the kindness and hospitality he and his family have shown my wife and me.”

W
HEN
the sun was a yellow spark and the blue sphere of Earth less than nothing, Cassie murmured, “Oh, Bill, my poor Bill. Why did you have to die?”

And when the Milky Way was a little band of bright stars, a thing like a diamond bracelet seen from a great distance, “Come back to me, Wally! Please, oh, please, Wally! Come back to me!”

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