The Best of Gene Wolfe

He picked up the card for her.

You must descend the seven hundred steps
to the Gate of Deeper Slumber.
You may enter the Enchanted Wood
or claim the sword Sacnoth.
Which do you choose?

Debbie said, “I take the Enchanted Wood. That leaves you the sword, Randy.”

Bev handed it to him. It was a falchion, he decided, curved and single edged. After testing the edge with his finger, he laid it in his lap. It was not nearly as large as a real sword—less than sixteen inches long, he decided, including the hardwood handle.

“Your turn, Randy.”

He discovered that he disliked Bev nearly as much as Debbie, hated her bleached blond hair, her scrawny neck. Bev and her dying plant were twins, one vegetable, one inhuman. He had not known that before.

She said, “It’s the wheel of Fortune,” as though he were stupid. He flicked the spinner.

“Unlawful evil.”

Bev said, “Right,” and picked up a card. “ ‘What do the following have in common: Pogo the Clown, H. H. Holmes, and Saucy Jacky?’ ”

Edgar said, “That’s an easy one. They’re all pseudonyms of mass murderers.”

“Right. ‘For an extra point, name the murderers.’”

“Gacy, Mudgett, and . . . that’s not fair. No one knows who the Ripper was.”

But he did: just another guy, a guy like anybody else.

Debbie tossed her dice. “Whitechapel. I’ll buy it. Give me the card, honey.”

He picked up the deed and studied it. “Low rents.”

Edgar chuckled. “And seldom paid.”

“I know,” Debbie told them, “but I want it, with lots of houses.” He handed her the card, and she gave him the dice.

For a moment he rattled them in his hand, trying to imagine himself the little pewter man. It was no use; there was nothing of bright metal about him or his dark wool coat—only the edge of the knife. “Seven-come-eleven,” he said, and threw.

“You got it,” Debbie told him. “Seven. Shall I move it for you?”

“No,” he said. He picked up the little pewter figure and walked past Holborn, the Temple (cavern-temple of Nasht and Kaman-Thah), and Lincolns Inn Fields, along Cornhill and Leadenhall streets to Aldgate High Street, and so at last to Whitechapel.

Bev said, “You saw him coming, Deb,” but her voice was very far away, far above the the leaden (hall) clouds, filthy with coal smoke, that hung over the city. Wagons and hansom cabs rattled by. There was a public house at the corner of Brick Lane. He turned and went in.

The barmaid handed him his large gin. The barmaid had Debbie’s dark hair, Debbie’s dark good looks. When he had paid her, she left the bar and took a seat at one of the tables. Two others sat there already, and there were cards and dice, money and drinks, before them. “Sit down,” she said, and he sat.

The blonde turned over a card, the jack of spades. “What are the spades in a deck of cards?” she asked.

“Swords,” he said. “From the Spanish word for a sword, espada. The jack of spades is really the jack of swords.”

“Correct.”

The other man said, “Knight to the White Chapel.”

The door opened, letting in the evening with a wisp of fog, and the black knight. She was tall and slender and dressed like a cavalryman, in high boots and riding breeches. A pewter miniature of a knight’s shield was pinned to her dark shirt.

The barmaid rattled the dice and threw.

“You’re still alive,” the black knight said. She strode to their table. Sergeant’s chevrons had been sewn to the sleeves of the shirt. “This neighborhood is being evacuated, folks.”

“Not by us,” the other man said.

“By you now, sir. On my orders. As an officer of the law, I must order you to leave. There’s a tank car derailed, leaking some kind of gas.”

“That’s fog,” Randolph Carter told her. “Fog and smoke.”

“Not just fog. I’m sorry, sir, but I must ask all of you to go. How long have you been here?”

“Sixteen years,” the blond woman said. “The neighborhood was a lot nicer when we came.”

“It’s some sort of chemical weapon, like LSD.”

He asked, “Don’t you want to sit down?” He stood, offering her his chair.