The Best of Gene Wolfe

think she likes me.”

“Exciting news,” the ruler said. He smiled.

The scarred young man smiled too, on his unscarred side. “It’s raining very hard here,” he said. “I think this girl is very loyal to you, sir. The rest of the people here—well, I don’t know. She told me about a man in the terminal who tried to molest her and another man who wanted to protect her. I was going to ask you to reward him and punish the other one, but I’m afraid they were the same man—that he wanted to meet her and this gave him the chance.”

“They are often the same man,” the ruler said. He paused as though lost in thought. “You are all right?”

“If I don’t find something tomorrow I won’t be able to afford to stay, but yes, I’m all right tonight.”

“You are very cheerful, Westwind. I love cheerfulness.”

The good side of the scarred young man’s face blushed. “It’s easy for me,” he said. “I’ve known all my life that I was your spy, your confidant—it’s like knowing where a treasure is hidden. Often I feel sorry for the others. I hope you’re not too severe with them.”

“I don’t want to aid you openly unless I must,” the ruler said. “But I’ll find ways that aren’t open. Don’t worry.” He winked.

“I know you will, sir.”

“Just don’t pawn your communicator.”

The image was gone, leaving only a blank screen. The young man turned out the light and continued to undress, taking off everything but his shorts. He was lying down on the bed when he heard a thump from the other side of the cardboard partition. The blind girl, feeling her way about the room, must have bumped into it. He was about to call, “Are you hurt?” when he saw that one of the panels, a section perhaps three feet by four, was teetering in its frame. He caught it as it fell and laid it on floor.

The light the old woman had turned on still burned in the girl’s room and he saw that she had hung up her coat and wrapped her hair in a strip of paper towels from the washstand. While he watched she removed her black glasses, set them on the bureau, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. One of her eyes showed only white; the iris of the other was the poisoned blue color of watered milk and turned in and down. Her face was lovely. While he watched she unbuttoned her blouse and hung it up. Then she unhooked her communicator from her belt, ran her fingers over the buttons once, and, without looking, pressed a number.

“This is Westwind,” she said.

He could not hear the voice that answered her, but the face in the screen, small and bright, was the face of the ruler. “I’m all right,” she said. “At first I didn’t think I was going to be able to find a place to stay tonight, but I have. And I’ve met someone.”

The scarred young man lifted the panel back into place as gently as he could and lay down again upon his bed. When he heard the rattle of her cane again he tapped the partition and called, “Breakfast tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t. Good night.”

“Good night,” he said.

In the room below them the old woman was patting her straggling hair into place with one hand while she punched a number with the other. “Hello,” she said, “this is Westwind. I saw you tonight.”

Afterword

It was not until I prepared to write this author’s note that I realized that long before I wrote this story the great G. K. Chesterton had written an entire book in which all the members of a gang of revolutionaries, save its head and one other, were spies for assorted police agencies and government bureaus.

Its head was God.

The book is The Man Who Was Thursday. You can find a copy if you look, and I suggest you read it.

The Hero as Werwolf

Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!
Eyes that can see in the dark—the dark!
Tongue—give tongue to it! Hark! O hark!
Once, twice and again!

—Rudyard Kipling, “Hunting Song of the Seeonee Pack”

An owl shrieked, and Paul flinched. Fear, pavement, flesh, death, stone, dark, loneliness, and blood made up Paul’s world; the blood was all much the same, but the fear took several forms, and he had hardly seen another human being in the four years since his mother’s death. At a night meeting in the park he was the red-cheeked young man at the end of the last row, with his knees together and his scrupulously clean hands (Paul was particularly careful about his nails) in his lap.

The speaker was fluent and amusing; he was clearly conversant with his subject—whatever it was—and he pleased his audience. Paul, the listener and watcher, knew many of the words he used; yet he had understood nothing in the past hour and a half, and sat wrapped in his stolen cloak and his own thoughts, seeming to listen, watching the crowd and the park—this, at least, was no ghost-house, no trap; the moon was up, night-blooming flowers scented the park air, and the trees lining the paths glowed with self-generated blue light; in the city, beyond the last hedge, the great buildings new and old were mountains lit from within.

Neither human nor master, a policeman strolled about the fringes of the audience, his eyes bright with stupidity. Paul could have killed him in less than a second, and was enjoying a dream of the policeman’s death in some remote corner of his mind even while he concentrated on seeming to be one of