Stories: All-New Tales

Gene Wolfe. LEIF IN THE WIND

“HE’S BEEN OUT THERE,” ENA SAID, “for an hour and fifty-two minutes. It took him twenty-eight to nail that plate back down. I’ve been trying to get him to come back in ever since.”

Brennan rubbed his chin. It was a big one, and required quite a bit of rubbing. “He answers you? He replies?”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“But he’s conscious?”

“I think so.”

“Fugue state?”

Ena shrugged.

“Talk to him.”

“I’ll try.” Ena’s gesture switched on the mike. “This is Ena again, Leif. Brennan is here with me now. What are you doing?”

“Watching the sunrise, Ena. The planetary shadow is fading. Fading…This sun appears behind the horizon curve, just peeping out past it now. I can feel the first breezes of its solar wind.”

Brennan tried to make his voice soft. “You can’t possibly feel a solar wind, Leif. You’re suited up.”

“I feel it.”

Ena said, “Please come back, Leif. We’ve completed the survey, done everything we were supposed to do, and-”

Brennan interrupted her. “The job’s finished, Leif. There’s no life down there. We have rock samples, cores, the works. Habitable planet, no life. Seed it and there could be colonies here in two hundred years. Maybe less.”

Leif said nothing.

Ena said, “I’ve never begged a man for anything-”

“Birds. I see birds.”

Brennan snorted. “You don’t see birds, damnit! There aren’t any, and if there were, you couldn’t see them from up here.”

Ena said, “Think of me, Leif-if you won’t think of yourself, at least think of me. The trip home will take fifteen more years. What if Brennan dies?”

Silence.

“Walt died. So did Barbara and Alaia. Brennan could die, too. I’d try to take the ship home all by myself, and I’d go insane. I couldn’t bear it. You know what the tests showed-nobody could.” She paused, waiting. “Think of me if you won’t think of yourself.”

Leif exclaimed, “You should see these birds! The detail! The colors! The combs and crests and wattles!”

Brennan said, “You’re dreaming them, Leif.”

“I couldn’t dream anything like this. It isn’t in me. It isn’t in anybody. They’re so big, and they get smaller as they come closer. Smaller and smaller, like jewels.”

Ena looked at Brennan, expecting him to reply, and saw that he was suiting up. She switched off her mike. “Are you going out there after him?”

“If I have to, yes.”

“I know you could outwrestle him, but can you catch him?”

“I’ll have to.”

She switched her mike back on. “Leif, I’m offering everything I’ve got. I’ll be your slave if you’ll just come back.” She gulped, and wondered whether her mike had picked it up. “I’ll do your details, all of them, and mine, too. We’ll be heroes when we get home, and I’ll give you a bath first, and clean and press your uniform. I’ll shine your boots and polish your brass. You said I was beautiful once, remember? Wouldn’t you like a beautiful slave?”

Brennan muttered, “Did he really?”

“I’ll-sleep with you like you wanted, Leif. You can do whatever you like with me, and I’ll do whatever you tell me to. Please?”

Leif said, “They’re nesting in me, all the beautiful birds. Perching on nerve fibers, sipping from tiny veins, Ena. Fluttering and singing. This is how a tree feels in summer.”

Wearily, Ena switched off her mike. “He doesn’t care about me.”

“He doesn’t care about us,” Brennan told her. “Not now he doesn’t.”

Leif said, “The wind murmurs in my branches, and the birds nest there.” He sounded rapturous. Ena’s screen showed a silver starfish, arms wide, legs spread, face invisible behind the glare of sunlight on his visor. Slowly, the starfish revolved, rolling like a wheel.

She heard the airlock open. “You’re going after him?”

Brennen stepped into the airlock. “Wish me luck.”

“I do,” she said. The airlock closed, and she added, “I wish you both luck. I hope you don’t kill each other.”

Still later: “Most of all I wish me luck.”

Was there nothing she could do but sit and watch? She unsnapped her belt, floated up, and pushed off.

Walt should have looked just as she remembered him from last time-so quickly frozen that no big crystals had formed, eyes shut, and very, very dead.

He did not. Dead, yes, but still there. So quickly frozen, she thought, that his soul had not had time to leave his body. Brennan thought it might be possible to reanimate him back on earth, and Brennan might be right.

Walt’s eyes were not completely shut. Surely they had been before?

Surely. But Walt was peeking out like one who feigns sleep.

“I may sleep with Leif if Brennan brings him back. I’ll have to sleep with Brennan. You’re dead, Walt.” Ena paused. “You’re dead for now, anyway. I won’t be cheating on you.”

From behind a plastic shield as clear as air, Walt watched her in silence.

“You understand, don’t you?” She began to close the lid. “Besides, I-we’re not all that different from you, we women.”

She returned to the bridge, floating along ovoid black corridors that should have echoed but did not. It had been wrong to silence them, she thought. The sound absorption was too good, it worked too well. Ghosts whispered in the black corridors now, Alaia’s ghost and Barbara’s.

Walt’s ghost.

On her screen, Brennan had a line around Leif’s waist and was playing it out behind him as he returned to the ship. Brightly lit by rising Beta Andromedae, the slack orange line traced fantastic loops and whorls against the still-dark planet they orbited. Ena switched on her mike. “Did he give you any trouble, Brennan?”

“Not a bit.”

Changing viewpoints, she watched Brennan enter the airlock, turn, and begin hauling Leif in. No resistance, but…She inserted a sedative cap in the injector. Leif, she told herself, was not particularly strong. And pushed aside the knowledge that all psychotics were.

Inside, he removed his helmet without assistance. His expression was rapt, his eyes elsewhere. The neck was one of the best places.

Leif relaxed, swaying, and Brennan said, “That was probably a good idea.”

“It can’t hurt.” Ena was opening Leif’s suit.

“I’m full of birds,” Leif told her.

“I see.”

“They’re nesting in me. Have I mentioned that?”

Absently, she nodded.

“We are their trees. That’s why there are no trees down there. We trees have just arrived.” Leif paused. “I would like to sit down.”

“No reason not to,” Brennan told him. “Step out of the boots and I’ll put you in a chair.”

When Leif did not move, Brennan lifted him out, the magnetic boot soles holding them to the deck. When Brennan had Leif in his console seat, Ena belted him in.

The first jump covered four thousandths of one light-year; recharging for the next would take thirty-six hours.

“Are we going home?” Leif asked. He sounded sleepy, and had not touched the buckle that held him in his seat.

Brennan said, “Right.” He was refolding Leif’s suit.

“You’ll have to walk in the spinner,” Ena told Leif, “just like Brennan and me. Just like you did on the trip out. Can you do it?”

Leif seemed not to have heard her.

“Two hours a day,” Brennan said. “If you don’t, your legs will break when we get home.”

Ena was inspired. “Your limbs, Leif. That’s your arms and your legs. You know what happens when limbs break.”

Leif stared at her. “The nests fall down.”

“Exactly!”

“I’m going into the spinner now.” Leif released his buckle. “Three hours. Three hours every day for me. I won’t forget.”

When Leif had gone, Brennan chuckled, wrapped Ena in his arms, and kissed her. When they parted, he whispered, “You were always the smartest woman on board.”

They were recharging for the fourth jump when Ena heard the first bird, its clear trills carried through the ventilation system. A twenty-minute search found it in Specimen Storage number 3, where it had nested among her neatly labeled sacks of rocks.

It was somewhat larger than a crow, and was not (she decided) exactly as a bird should be. That sinuous neck, armored in diamond scales, might have belonged to a snake; the sides of its long, curved beak were toothed like the blades of saws. It spread its wings when she approached, threatening her with retractile claws that sprouted from their forward edges.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Ena said softly. “Really, I don’t. You’re very, very valuable to all three of us. You’re an alien life-form, you see.” It was difficult to remain calm.

The bird rattled its feathers-a warning buzz, loud and abrupt.

She kicked off from a specimen bag, backing away. “I’m going to bring you something to eat. I don’t know what you’ll like, so I’ll try several things.” Could it eat their food?

Brennan was checking the recharge readings. “Pile’s running good,” he told her. “Next jump should be right on schedule.”

“Leif’s birds are real.” She had drifted over to her console.

“Are you kidding me?”

Seeing his skepticism, she nodded. “Sure. But don’t you hear that noise? Listen. I think it’s coming through the vents.”

After a moment he left his seat and kicked off, stopping aft vent. Ena smiled to herself.

“That’s a bearing getting ready to fail. Probably one of the fans. I’ll see to it.”

As he shot out into the corridor, she called, “Good luck!”

She was checking the pile herself when Leif wandered in. “Do you need me?”

“Not really.” She smiled. “The best thing you could do right now is to shower and put on a clean uniform. Will you do that? For me?”

Leif nodded.

“Thank you! I really appreciate it. Put the one you’re wearing in the laundry, and I’ll see to it. Don’t forget to empty the pockets.”

“There’s nothing in there.” Leif seemed to wait for her to speak. “All right, I’ll empty them anyway.”

It was almost time for the jump when Brennan returned. “There’s a bird on the ship!”

“No shit?” Ena feigned surprise.

He grabbed at a handy conduit and swung to a stop, panting. “Sweetheart, you ought to see it! It’s taller than I am.”

“If you’re going to sniff solvents,” Ena said icily, “I don’t want you to call me sweetheart. Cut it out. Cut it out right now. This is the only warning you’ll get.”

“It’s down on H Deck. Come on, I’ll show you.”

“One of us has to stay on the bridge, and since you’ve been sniffing, it had better be me.”

“Leif can do it.”

“Leif isn’t around, and God only knows what he’d do if he were alone here.”

“It’s real. Do I have to take a picture?”

Feeling almost sorry for him, she shook her head. “No. No, you don’t, Brennan. Catch it and throw it off the ship. It’ll be out in space somewhere, and I can pick it up in my viewer.”

“Don’t you understand what this means?”

“Yes. It means that Leif can infect others with his hallucinations. Or else you’ve been sniffing. I like the second one better.”

“I’m going to catch it,” Brennan told her. “Catch it and confine it. Then I’m going to show it to you. Don’t jump without me. You’re not qualified.”

“You mean I don’t have the paper. By this time I know how to do it as well as you do.”

“Don’t jump!”

Then he was gone. Ena smiled to herself as she tried to track him through the surveillance cameras. When FULL CHARGE appeared on her upper-left screen, she jumped.

A DAY AND MORE passed before Brennan returned. Ena slept on the bridge, tethered to a hatch handle and hanging weightless among 552 instruments. Leif wandered in and volunteered to bring her food and water. She was using the surveillance cameras to search for Brennan when Brennan touched her shoulder.

“You jumped-I felt it.” He was trying hard to look severe, but could only look haggard and triumphant.

“Sure,” Ena said. “I knew you would. I jumped, and that’s why the pile’s burning and power’s flickering. I don’t know what that vibration is, but it darned near-”

“Very funny.” Brennan belted himself into his console seat. He studied the screen, clicked twice, and studied it again.

“Did you catch the bird?”

“I did.” Brennan nodded. “I got a number three cargo net and rigged it up to close when the bird tried to get through. When it was ready, I drove the bird in front of me with a welding torch.”

“Where is it now?”

He sighed. “Empty ration locker, or I hope it is. It may still be tangled in the net. I don’t know.”

“We can’t keep it there for fifteen years.”

“Right. We’ll let it out, v-tape it, kill it, v-tape it some more, strip the bones and save them.” Under his breath he added, “If it has bones.”

Ena said, “Tissue specimens, too. Maybe we should freeze the head.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“It tried…Tricks. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“You didn’t believe me when I told you Leif’s birds were real.”

Brennan straightened up. “I’m still not sure you were right. Maybe I caught a delusion. You want to fetch the ’corder?”

“Somebody’s supposed to stay on the bridge.”

“Leif. I’ll get him.”

This time she offered no objection.

The green food lockers were on C Deck. Brennan caught the handle of one in Aisle 10. “This is it. I’m going to level with you, sweetheart. I don’t think it’s still in here, but this is where I put it. I threw it in and locked the door.” He took the key from his pocket, a strip of plastic no larger than a paper clip.

Ena sighed. “Walt was supposed to have those. Keep us from eating too much.”

“Walt’s dead.”

She nodded. “So now I can eat all I want.”

“With three gone, it won’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”

“So I ought to eat too much. Bored people always eat too much.”

Watching her, Brennan nodded. “That was why Walt kept the keys.”

“But I don’t. I don’t eat enough. I keep driving myself to eat. Or try to, anyway. All my uniforms are loose.” She paused. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“In a minute, maybe. Boredom makes people eat-you’re right about that. Depression keeps them from eating. Get somebody depressed enough, and she’ll starve herself to death. You tried to bribe Leif with sex. I heard you.”

Slowly Ena nodded.

“I’m not going to say I don’t want sex. It would be a lie, and you’d know it was a lie. Every man wants sex, but that’s not the only thing I want. I want you to love me. I want you to love me the way you loved Walt. Okay, I want it for my own selfish reasons. Hell yes, I do. But I want it for your sake, too.”

Brennan paused. “For a second there you were trying to smile. I wish you’d made it.”

She said, “So do I.”

“When I kissed you, up on the bridge, you kissed back.”

She nodded.

“So there’s hope for us.”

“‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’” Ena waited for Brennan to speak. When he did not, she added, “That’s Emily Dickinson.”

“Yeah, I know.” Brennan pulled himself toward the food locker. “You want me to show you the bird and quit talking about all this, because it bothers you. I’ve got it. Only it might help you, too, so I’ve got to keep it up. You think I don’t miss Barbara? You think I don’t wake up when the cabin’s dark, wondering if she’s asleep? I need you almost as much as you need me. You don’t have to believe that.”

“What I believe doesn’t matter.”

“The hell it doesn’t! I need you, and that’s why I’ll never quit. You’ll see, and Ena…”

“What?”

“We’ll get back home alive. Both of us.”

She kissed him, and it was like-yet not quite like-their kiss on the bridge.

“I don’t think the bird’s still in here,” Brennan said rather later. “Not really. It was too tricky for that.”

“We didn’t think they could nest in Leif either.”

“Yeah. What the hell are they? Devils? They can’t be angels.”

Ena said, “I don’t think we’ve got the word. Or the concept either. We’ll have to develop them.”

“Maybe. If we can.”

Brennan opened the locker, and something smaller than a bee flew out.

“It got out,” he said. “Some way it got out. Where the hell did it go?”

“‘They get smaller as they come closer.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What it says, perhaps. Leif said it before you pulled him in.”

Brennan rubbed his jaw. Rather to her surprise, Ena discovered that she enjoyed watching him rub his jaw.

“Mine didn’t get smaller when I was chasing it.”

Ena nodded. “It wasn’t coming closer. You were, or you were trying to.”

They jumped.

“Sonofabitch! Did you feel that?”

“Yes.” She discovered that she was holding his arm, and let go. “Yes, I did. It was Leif, up on the bridge.”

“Sure. Had to be.” Brennan glanced at his watch. “He went the minute recharge was complete.”

She nodded. “Now we’ll have to see in which direction.”

THEY HELD A TRIAL the next day, a kangaroo court with Leif tied into his seat. “I’m the prosecutor,” Brennan explained. Brennan no longer sounded, or looked, angry, but his voice was deadly serious. “You’re the defendant and the counsel for the defense, too. Ena’s the judge. She and I think that will be fair. What you think doesn’t matter. I’m going to put the case against you. You’ll be given an opportunity to rebut it. Ena will decide on your penalty.”

“If any,” Ena said.

“She’ll decide your penalty, if there is one. Do you understand?”

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you,” Leif said. He might have been talking to himself. “I just wanted to go back. Fuel’s forty-seven percent surplus. Food’s-”

Brennan raised his fist and looked at Ena.

She shook her head. “We used to be friends, Leif. I’d like us to be friends again. Like us to be friends right now.”

“All right.”

“Good. This is a trial. I am your judge. Do you understand that?”

“I’m not stupid. I just want to go back.”

“I know. Brennan?”

“He sabotaged our mission. Not by some accident. Not even by inattention. He did it deliberately. He brought his damned birds in. We don’t know how many there are, but there’s a lot. You and I will have to round them up and kill them. It may take years, and we may never catch them all.”

Leif started to speak, but Brennan silenced him. “He negated our last jump, and he’ll be a danger to us, and to the mission, for the next fifteen years. Say that we let him live. We’ll have to lock him up and feed him, just you and me, on top of all our other duties. We’ll have to make sure he stays locked up, because we can’t trust him out for a minute. One of us will have to walk with him in the spinner, and that will have to be me, because he might jump you. If-”

“I might jump you, too,” Leif said.

“Sure.” Brennan grinned. “Want to try?”

“He will try,” Ena said thoughtfully. “He might even succeed, if he catches you off guard. Now stop arguing with him.”

She pointed to Leif. “You’re to be quiet until it’s your turn to talk. We’ll tape your mouth if we have to.”

Brennan cleared his throat. “You’re right. I don’t think he’d succeed, but he’ll try. Sooner or later, he’ll try to jump me. If he does succeed, the mission is shot. Finished. Ruined. Six lives and billions of dollars, all wasted.”

Ena nodded.

“That’s not the only danger. This ship wasn’t built as a prison. No matter where we lock him up, he’ll have years to try to figure some way out. I’ve never wanted to kill anybody, and God knows I don’t want to kill Leif. We’re going to have to do it just the same. Can we keep him sedated for fifteen years? Have you got enough dope for that?”

Ena shook her head.

“For one year?”

“We might keep him lightly sedated for a year or more. Not for two.”

“How do you know lightly would be enough?”

“I don’t,” Ena said.

Brennan sighed. “Okay, you’ve got my case. Can he be killed, legally? I don’t know and you don’t either, but we both doubt it. So I’m not asking you to kill him or even help me to. I’ll do it alone. I’ll stick him in the airlock without a suit, and we’ll write it up in the log. Maybe they’ll try me for murder when we get home. Maybe they won’t. I’ll take my chances. Now let’s hear Leif.”

“I didn’t endanger the mission,” Leif began. “I’ve explained that already. There’s plenty of food and plenty of fuel. The air plant’s running fine. What I tried to do would have delayed the ship’s return to earth by a few days. No more than that. You two are perfectly capable of taking the ship back. If you were to die, it’s perfectly capable of taking itself back. The six of us were put on board to take care of emergencies, and because we’d be needed once the ship got to Beta Andromedae. We’ve done all that, or at least we’ve done it as well as three people could, taking pix, measuring the magnetic field, mapping, and all the rest of it.”

“You finished?” Brennan asked.

“No. You blame me for bringing the birds. If what you say were correct-it’s not, but if it were-I’d deserve a medal. Neither of you found alien life. Not a speck. Not a trace. I found it, and returned to the ship with live specimens. You won’t concede a thing, I know. But if your accusation were correct, that would be the fact and I would be a hero.”

Ena said, “You say it’s not.”

“I do. The birds came into me while I was suited up, out in space. I told you they were there.”

Reluctantly, Ena nodded.

“I didn’t want to come back onto the ship, infected as I was. Brennan forced me to. If bringing my birds onto the ship was a crime, Brennan is the criminal. Not me.”

“You’re the one who sabotaged our mission,” Brennan said.

Ena raised her hand. “We’ve heard the accusation and Leif’s defense. I don’t want to get into it again.”

Leif said, “You promised me a chance to defend myself. I have one more thing to say. It will take less than a minute. May I do it?”

She nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Brennan threatens me with death. Surely you can see that I wanted to return to Beta Andromedae so that I could die there. I’ll suit up and go out again. You need only let me do it. Put a K beside my name in the log, and note that I was a suicide. It will be true, and if either of you is accused of my murder a veriscope reading will prove your innocence.”

Ena smiled. “Brennan?”

“I’m willing if you are.”

“I’m not. Not as it stands. You’ll have to do us a service first, Leif. Go through the ship and collect the birds. All of them. Get them back inside you. They went in once, and I think they’ll go in again if you approach them right. Do it, and we’ll go back as you ask and put you out.”

HE HAD SPREAD HIMSELF like a starfish, and the birds had flown. All of them-or nearly all. Now he blew like a dry leaf in the solar wind, revolving like a cartwheel.

His air was running out. His body would die; and that which would not die would be free at last, free to rove the universe and beyond.

Death waited beside him, warm and dark and friendly, and Leif could hardly wait.

IN HER CABIN, ENA smiled to herself as she shook the small brown bottle. She had caught the faint fragrance of Brennan’s aftershave when he relieved her on the bridge. He could not possibly have brought enough to last for half the voyage; thus he had hoarded some and was using it now.

The odor haunted her, delightful and unidentifiable. What aftershave had Walt used, what cologne? She had known those things once, but they were gone and only the memory of Brennan’s faint fragrance remained. Russian leather? Spice? Neither seemed correct.

Turning the bottle over in her hand, she reread the label she had read so often since finding the bottle in a food locker: ¬ËÊ£ÌÌË ¤ÎŸ¢ËØŸ.

She would smell like a cookie.

Opening the bottle, she applied the thin brown liquid it contained to five strategic spots.

Brennan would welcome her return. They would kiss, and she would unbutton his shirt. And then-

She interrupted the daydream to listen. A bird sang in her right wrist.