The Best of Gene Wolfe

“Two in each room,” Donovan said. “They’ll come out when they’re ready—that’s what most of the guys in the chairs are waiting for.”

“How’s the attack going?” Peters asked. He was conscious of swaying a little and took hold of the back of a chair with one hand.

“Great,” Donovan said. The door of the east bedroom opened and a short man in a wool suit too heavy for Portugal came out sweating; after a moment a man who had been smoking stinking Dutch cigarettes in a chair near the door got up and went in.

“Great?” Peters asked.

“We haven’t lost an inch of ground yet. Not an inch.”

Peters looked at the screen. It showed a parking lot, apparently part of a shopping complex. Some broken glass lay on the asphalt, and several dead men, but nothing much seemed to be happening. Occasionally the whine of a shot came, its origin and its target equally unknowable.

“This is our side,” Donovan explained. “The stuff near the screen. The hairies have still got those buildings over on the far side.”

“We’re not supposed to be holding ground,” Peters said. “We’re supposed to be, you know, going forward.” He looked at his watch. “They ought to be almost to the lake shore by now.”

“We’re regrouping,” Donovan said.

“Listen. Will you listen to me for a minute?” Peters was aware that he was about to make some kind of fool out of himself, and that he could not prevent it. “We ought to be there, doing something, helping them. I mean we’re three men; we’re not just nothing.” He tried to make a joke of it: “Tredgold here’s smart, I’m strong, and you’re Irish—we could do something.”

Donovan looked at him blankly, then slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Yeah, sure,” and turned away.

Tredgold drawled, “Another thing I forgot to tell you about l’ancien regime— the winners are those who don’t fight for it. Thought your mum would have put you wise to that already. The mums know.” After a second’s hesitation he added, “Only works while the chaps who do fight play the game, of course. No profit otherwise—no anything at all.”

“Profit?” Peters said. “You said they didn’t really want profits, and I’ve been thinking about that and you’re right—for them profit above a certain point is just taking from each other. You said that.”

“Did I? I suppose I did. It sounds familiar. Wait a sec, will you? All my bloody birds are nesting and I want a drink.”

Peters called after him, “But what is it they do want?” and heard Tredgold mutter, “To hang on to their places, I should think.”

“Ah.” Lowell Lewis put his hand on Peters’s shoulder. “You and Donovan taking care of things for us out here, Pete? How’s it going?”

“Quiet,” Peters said.

“You’re up on the battle, I assume?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. We’ve been getting quite a number of calls on the private link from other companies—they have a stake in this of one sort or another, and they want to know the situation. To keep from clogging General Virdon’s communications with that sort of thing I’ve arranged that we would handle them. Think you can hold down the hot seat for a while?”

Peters nodded.

“There’s one other thing. You remember the soldier we had on-screen? The one that hippie-type boy from Philadelphia cut off?”

“Hale,” Peters said.

“Right. He was from the PR agency, of course; but when he had made the take that fool major who’s replacing Colonel Hopkins grabbed him; he seems to have put him in one of the combat outfits. Naturally the agency is very upset. Try to bail him out, will you?”

Peters nodded again.

“Fine. In an hour I’ll send in Donovan or Miss Morris, and you can bring yourself up to date.”

Peters went into the center bedroom, trying to walk as steadily as he could, though he knew Lewis had already turned away to talk to someone else.

The bedroom was empty and dark. The vidlink screen was flashing the identity of some caller—Peters did not bother to discover who. He drew the curtains at the far end of the room and looked out over the patio wall at the headlights of the cars on the street outside, and noted vaguely that a diagonal view showed him the same dark Atlantic that sometimes seemed ready to invade the big room from which he had come.

There was a bathroom and he used it. He felt that he might have to vomit, but he did not.

Communicating doors linked this bedroom with those to east and west. He tried them, and found (as he had expected) that they were locked on the other side. Outside each he listened for a moment and heard the creaking of springs and whispered words, but no laughter.

At the vidlink he ignored the incoming calls and coded the Library of Congress, wondering if there was still anyone left there. There was, a plain-looking black girl of about twenty. He asked if she had a taped summary of American history for the last thirty years. She nodded and started to say something else, then asked, “Who is this calling, please?” And he said, “My name is Peters. I’m with United Services Corporation.”

“Oh,” she said. And then, “Oh!”

He asked her if something was the matter.