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Authors: Gene Wolfe

BOOK: Castleview
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FROM THE DAOINE INSTITUTE
“MERC!” NOT without pain, Shields sat up in his hospital bed. “Merc, what the hell are you doing here, and what happened to your arm?”
“Hi, Dad. I’m afraid it’s broken; we were in an accident.”
The big, blond man who had come in with Mercedes rumbled, “That, of course, is why your daughter is here in this hospital. But if you’re asking why she’s here, now—here in your room—it is because I brought her.”
Mercedes nodded. “That’s right, Dad. I didn’t know you were in here any more than you knew I was. This is Dr. von Madadh.”
Von Madadh bowed, his head inclined three degrees from the perpendicular. “And I’m here in pursuance of my volunteer work for the Daoine Institute, Mr. Shields. Although I’m an M.D., I’m not associated with this hospital; I practice at Ravenswood, in Chicago.”
Shields said, “I see—or rather, I guess I don’t. Merc, you said
we
were in an accident. You don’t mean you and your mother, since she drove me here just a little while ago. Who were you with?”
“Seth Howard. Remember, Dad? That guy at the house we looked at. Only he wasn’t—oh, it’s all so complicated.”
Von Madadh had found a white plastic chair on casters for her. He pushed it into position and steadied it while she sat. “Mr. Shields, what your daughter is trying to tell you is that Seth Howard was not driving at the time of their accident; the police here insist that he was. In my view, they’re mistaken.”
Shields nodded. “If Merc says he wasn’t, you’re right. Who was, Merc?”
“A man named Jim. There was a woman with him who said her name was Viviane Morgan; she was in the back with me.” Mercedes turned to von Madadh. “I didn’t tell you that she came in while I was talking to the sheriff, did I?”
Von Madadh shook his head.
“Well, she did. She said she was from a newspaper, and she took our pictures. I kept waiting for her to say hello, but she never even smiled.”
Von Madadh nodded. “Has it occurred to you, Mercedes, that it may not actually have been the same woman?”
“It was her! I recognized her.”
“Mr. Shields, do you mind if I smoke? Do you, Mercedes?”
She shook her head, and Shields said, “No, not at all.”
From a gold-plated cigar case, von Madadh produced a long, dark cigar; he rolled it between his palms as he spoke. “What Mercedes has just told us carries me nicely to the work of the Daoine Institute—the work that brought me here to Castleview. From your expressions I judge that neither of you are familiar with it.”
Shields shook his head.
“I assumed you wouldn’t be, which was why I wanted to speak to you together. I’m a bore on the subject, but though I must necessarily bore others from time to time, I much prefer to bore myself as infrequently as I can.” With surprisingly sharp white teeth, he bit the tip from his cigar and spat.
“Let me begin with Michael Daoine, an Irish immigrant. He came to this country, a boy of seventeen, in the closing years of the preceding century. Like so many of his countrymen, he entered one of the building trades—first carrying a hod, then
laying brick, then subcontracting brick and stone construction, and at last becoming a full contractor. America was expanding rapidly in those days. There was a great deal of construction and thus a great deal of work for such contractors. Daoine was a good one, and he became rich.”
Mercedes asked, “He founded your institute?”
“Correct. He was an intelligent man, you understand. When he came to America he could scarcely write his name, but he read widely, as so many poorly educated people in his day did; public libraries encouraged it, a thing that seems almost inconceivable now.” Von Madadh clamped his extraordinary teeth on the cigar and produced a gold lighter. “Sure it won’t bother either of you? Thank you.”
Shields said, “I take it this has something to do with the photographer, Dr. von Madadh—the woman who was with Mercedes at the time of the accident.”
“I think so. Probably with one and possibly with both. My first name’s Rex, by the way, and it’s a whole lot shorter.”
“Call me Will,” Shields told him; rather belatedly, the two shook hands.
“Have you ever heard of the Fairy Faith?”
Mercedes said, “There was a thing about it on TV—people in Ireland who still believe in leprechauns and banshees.”
Von Madadh nodded. “It’s found in many parts of the world; among Caucasians, belief is actually strongest in Iceland. It’s weakest in the Western Hemisphere—in fact it can hardly be said to exist here at all. That was something Michael Daoine found puzzling. The Fairy Faith was widespread in western Ireland at the time he was growing up; his parents had been believers, and several relatives had actually had brushes with the fairies, or at least claimed to have had them. He studied the matter in his spare time, talked with his workmen—there were Swedes, Greeks, and Italians among them, as well as Irishmen and black Americans—and read a good deal of folklore and a great deal of history. As you might expect he came across quite a few oddities, such as the giants of Patagonia.”
Von Madadh puffed his black cigar, staring not at them but out the dark window of the hospital room.
Shields cleared his throat. “Are you talking about man-like apes?”
Still watching the night, von Madadh grinned and shook his head. “No, not at all. Those are so common there’s no need to go afield for them. Mercedes, can you name the first man to circumnavigate the earth?”
“Was it Magellan?”
“Correct. He was a Portuguese explorer, and what he and his bold crew accomplished in the Sixteenth Century was every bit as brilliant and every bit as important as all the triumphs of all the cosmonauts and astronauts in our own. The record of their voyage was compiled by an Italian named Antonio Pigafetta; he survived it, as Magellan himself did not. As far as we are able to judge, he was a thoroughly reliable officer. Certainly the rest of the crew seemed to think so; and if ever a group of men had passed through fire, it was that crew.”
Mercedes asked, “Did he say he’d seen giants?”
“Yes, he did. Oh, not giants as lofty as church steeples, such as one finds in children’s books—it’s easy enough to show that those could not exist. What Pigafetta actually wrote was, ‘This man was so tall our heads scarcely came to his waist; his voice was like the bellowing of a bull.’
“In other words, Pigafetta didn’t merely see his giant—he stood beside him and talked to him. Now the distance from the ground to the waist of a normally-proportioned man is just about fifty-five percent of his height. Let’s say that Pigafetta and the rest averaged five foot five—men were smaller four hundred years ago. That would make Magellan’s giant slightly less than ten feet tall.”
Von Madadh turned back toward them. “But we don’t believe them, do we? Spics and wops.” He drew deeply on his cigar and puffed pale, fragrant smoke, like an incense burner. “In fact, most of the safety and sanity of our safe and sane little world depends upon our disbelieving anyone who doesn’t speak
English. Your name’s Schindler-Shields, isn’t it, Mercedes? That’s what Seth told me.”
Mercedes nodded. “Schindler for my mom.”
“Then your ancestry is German and Irish; so is mine. Your forefathers spoke Gaelic or German, and are thus entitled to no credence.” Von Madadh chuckled. “Besides—Pigafetta? Who’d believe somebody with a name like that! And it was four hundred years ago, so let’s move up to the Eighteenth Century —George Washington’s time. Everybody believed George, eh? A British warship, the
Dolphin,
dropped anchor at Patagonia. Her skipper was a Commodore Byron—that’s a step above captain, notice; if the commodore was promoted again, he died an admiral.
“Commodore Byron was just under six feet. He could barely reach the tops of the natives’ heads when standing on tiptoe. That makes them at least eight feet tall; and in fact a report by one of the
Dolphin’s
officers states, ‘There was hardly a man there less than eight feet, most considerably more; the women, I believe, run from seven and a half to eight feet.’ Science, to be sure, denies the existence of any such race.”
Shields asked, “Does this have anything to do with Mercedes’s accident?”
“Perhaps not,” von Madadh admitted. “I can take it, then, that neither of you have seen any giants?”
Shields shook his head.
“We did, Dad!” Mercedes exclaimed. “Don’t you remember the man on the horse? We just about hit him. I bet he was at least eight feet tall.”
“But he was mounted?”
Shields said, “He was a big man, certainly, riding a very big horse; but I don’t think he was eight feet tall or anything close to it. Six feet six, maybe. It was raining and getting dark, and we only got a glimpse of him.”
Von Madadh puffed thoughtful smoke. “You didn’t see his face?”
Shields shook his head; so did his daughter.
“How was he dressed?”
Shields shrugged. “I’d say he had on a long coat of some kind, probably a slicker or something like that. I remember it covered him to the ankles.”
Von Madadh nodded. “Riding boots, I suppose?”
Mercedes closed her eyes to summon up the dark figure once more. “I don’t think we could see them, because his feet were inside the whatchacallums—the stirrups.”
“A stirrup doesn’t really cover much of the rider’s foot,” von Madadh protested mildly. “They’re just iron rings, shaped like the letter D lying on its face.”
Mercedes shuddered and shook her head. “These weren’t—or anyhow the one I could see wasn’t. You know what it reminded me of? A wooden shoe! Grandmother had one she used to grow ferns in, remember, Dad? Only it was—I think it was metal.”
Shields said, “How about leveling with us now, Rex? This is what you’re looking for, isn’t it? This giant, if he really is a giant. He’s the reason that the Daoine Institute sent you up here from Chicago.”
“That’s right.” Von Madadh tapped ash from his cigar. “I didn’t realize I was quite so transparent; perhaps I should say I hadn’t realized you were quite so percipient. I tried to lead you into it, as you obviously understand. I hope you understand also that I was doing it in a very good cause. One simply can’t go up to strangers and say, ‘Have you met many of the Fair Folk lately? Are you much troubled by trolls this fall? Is there a giant active hereabouts, sir? Madame? Are the jinn abroad?’”
Mercedes giggled.
“You see. Yet the answers are frequently yes, because such things are encountered far more often than you might imagine.”
Shields said, “But still unrecognized by science? That’s pretty hard to swallow.”
“Indeed it is. And they mean to keep it so, for as long as
possible. Have you any notion how many species of animals there are on this planet?”
“No,” Shields said. “Thousands, I suppose.”
“You’re being extremely conservative, believe me; there are literally millions; and yet—supposedly—only one has developed sufficient intelligence to make tools and use fire. Do you find that plausible? Honestly, now.”
Shields shrugged. “It seems to me that if there were any others … .”
“They would be seen and reported? Yes, of course. And of course they have been, thousands upon thousands of times. The truly surprising thing is how frequently they’re still reported, despite the torrents of ridicule directed at the witnesses. When I brought up giants, you mentioned man-like apes; and there have been tens of thousands of sightings of those hairy giants with protruding teeth—from every state in the Union except Hawaii, and every Canadian province except Nova Scotia. Witnesses in California call the thing they saw Big Foot. At the southern end of our own state it’s the Big Muddy Monster. Here and over in Iowa, it’s generally called Big Mo, presumably because many are seen along the Missouri River. Farther north it becomes the Minnesota Ice Giant. In the mountains of Tibet and Nepal it’s a yeti or an abominable snowman. Over in Northwestern Europe it’s a troll, and so on.”
Mercedes had been staring at her father. “Just exactly what happened to you, Dad? Dr. von Madadh said you’d had an accident. I thought he meant in a car, like Seth and me.”
Shields grinned at her. “I met a troll, Mercedes. Met—hell, I wrestled one. Your mother hit us both with an old Jeep Cherokee. The troll had its back to her, so she couldn’t see me, or at least I hope she couldn’t. Now if you tell them that here, I’ll disown you. Rex, what about the couple that was in the car with Merc and the Howard boy? They weren’t giants or trolls, from what I’ve heard, and they weren’t kids, either. When are you going to talk about them?”
Mercedes tried to imagine her father wrestling a troll and failed; the twilit yet vivid memory of the mounted giant rose before her mind’s eye in its place. It still seemed to her that his huge horse had too many legs.
SATURDAY
LIKE A giant in golden armor, a Canadian high had driven off the wet and stormy low that had dominated the north-central area for nearly a week. Crystalline and visible, it stood guard above it now, so that the new day was born in sunshine. Flecks of cotton cloud hurried across the blue toward the Great Lakes. It was a lovely morning, but colder than it looked.
Sally sat up in bed when she heard the whine of the vacuum cleaner. “Seth? Seth, is that you?” Then she remembered that Seth was in the hospital, Tom dead. Passionately she longed to sleep again.
It was Momma, of course. Only Momma would vacuum her rugs for her. Momma or Kate, and Kate—
That thought too had to be pushed to one side. Sally went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, took a shower, washed her hair, and put it up. When she came out, the vacuum cleaner was silent, and the rich smell of frying ham filled the hall. She opened the kitchen door, and Dr. von Madadh waved a spatula and wished her a good morning.
“I’m so sorry, Doctor! I thought you—I must’ve overslept, and—”
He glanced at the clock in the console of the stove. “Ten till ten. That’s not too late for somebody who was up half the night, I think. Whenever a patient heals too slowly, I ask how
much sleep she’s been getting. Nine hours plus does wonders for a post-operative patient, I assure you. I wish I could convince the hospital of that.”
“And you were vacuuming, weren’t you? That was wonderful of you.”
Von Madadh shook his head. “Not wonderful at all, since my racket woke you. I didn’t think it would, with the hall between us. At any rate, I called it quits when I heard the shower. To tell the truth, I’m ready for a few comestibles myself. You’ll have some eggs, I assume? I’ve decided upon three—the laborer is worthy of his hire, as whoosis says. Scrambled? Sunny-side? Basted? We called that
blinded
in my youth, and I’m partial to those unseeing eggs even today—I don’t feel so bad when I stick a sharp piece of toast into them.”
Sally smiled, despite her best efforts. “Blinded will be fine. I’ll set the table.”
“The shirred is king of eggs, in my humble opinion, and I confess I’m an expert; but we really haven’t the time for them.” With one quick motion he cracked two eggs against the frying pan and opened them together. “Blind three for you?”
“Two,” Sally told him. “You said we wouldn’t have time. Did the hospital call?”
“About Seth? No, I—”
“Or about Kate.”
Von Madadh shook his head. “They didn’t call at all, about anybody. I merely meant that our ham would be overcooked if we took the time for shirred eggs. We shall enjoy shirred eggs à la von Madadh tomorrow morning. That is we will if …” He let the thought hang.
“Oh, you’re perfectly welcome to stay here, Doctor. For as long as you want. I mean that.”
“Thank you. I like it here, although I hope I won’t have to impose on you for more than a few days. You’re really very kind.” He was ladling hot ham drippings onto the eggs with a cooking spoon.
“You’re sure they didn’t call?”
“The hospital? No. Someone did call, however, although I had hoped to postpone the news until you’d finished your coffee.”
Sally had been setting a cup and saucer at his place; they rattled in her hand. “Who?”
“A funeral parlor. Fuchs? I believe that was it
—fox
in German. Ugly, sneaking, thieving little critters.” He had left the stove to pour coffee into her cup. “Now sit down and drink this.”
“What did they want?”
Von Madadh replaced the coffee pot on its burner. “Follow my prescription, please, and I’ll tell you. You do know your father’s safe, don’t you? You recall that from last night?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s right, he was missing, wasn’t he? But he was here, later, after they …”
“After your sister was taken to the hospital,” von Madadh prompted her.
“That’s right, you came back. I was at the hospital, and the receptionist wouldn’t call a taxi for me. I couldn’t find you. Where were you?”
“With Seth, in a little break area he’d discovered. There was water for tea there and a pop machine. I suppose the place was really intended for nurses, but the deputies had been using it, which was how Seth knew about it. He wanted to go home, you see—just walk out of the hospital and come back here, and I had to talk him out of it. That took quite a time.”
Sally nodded, mostly to herself. “I should have known it was something like that.”
“When I got back to the lobby, the receptionist said you’d left. I felt like stretching my legs and was rather hoping to run into a friend I’d seen in town earlier, so I walked, too.” With the dash of a card sharp, von Madadh dealt a smoking slice of ham to each of the plates Sally had taken from the cupboard, and added basted eggs.
It was nice, she reflected, to have a man in the house. It had been nice to have Tom. She had loved Tom and still did; but it
was nice now to have this doctor, to have Rex. She attempted to picture herself living nearer Chicago, “where my husband’s practice is.” It wasn’t terribly far, really. Three hours or less, if you drove fast.
 
Boomer was galloping no longer, had not galloped much in a long while; he trotted now except when there was a fallen tree to jump, and once Lucie had dismounted and led him for a mile or more.
A fresh wind stirred the hemlocks and sang among the naked branches of the oaks, chanting sometimes of bears, sometimes of wolves or rabbits, sometimes of other things that Boomer did not know; always he pricked his ears to listen, flaring his nostrils as his heart remembered the old, wild ways of the uplands, the gray dawns when stallion fought stallion with teeth and flashing hooves, and neither was ever stalled, nor knew the touch of man.
Bushes parted on his mounting side. A slender woman had separated them with thorn-torn hands; her cheeks bled, and her ragged dress was stiff with blood. “Please,” she murmured. “Miss? Oh, Miss?”
Lucie clucked and dug his ribs with both heels.
“Judy? Have you seen Judy, my daughter? My little girl, Judy? Please, oh, please stop.”
Boomer broke into a weary canter, iron-shod feet wounding the moss with every stride. The woman and her plaintive voice were left far behind, and with them the quick, muffled drumming of other hooves upon the moss—hoofbeats not his, tapping out a rhythm that reminded him of the barn, and long, easy rides with laughing girls.
 
“How are we this morning, Mr. Shields?”
Making a face, Shields sat up. A perky nurse’s aide put a green tray across his lap, and he dumped the skimpy jigger of whitish powder into the noxious-looking coffee. “Starved,” he told her. “Starved and in agony.”
“You’re one of the last ones getting breakfast. You were asleep when I came in at eight.”
He nodded. “I drifted off around seven forty.” The coffee was every bit as awful as it looked, and boiling hot. As it happened, he liked boiling-hot coffee. Score three points. “Am I getting out of this place today?”
“I expect you will, but I don’t really know.” The nurse’s aide lowered her voice. “Mr. Shields, isn’t Mercedes Schindler-Shields your daughter?”
“Sure.” A tablespoon of hard scrambled eggs (they’d better never give Ann
that
one) a slice of white toast, and Corn Flakes and milk.
“Do you know what’s happened to her?”
He looked up, startled. “What’s happened to her? Run some tests, for God’s sake! This is a hospital, isn’t it? Do a CAT-scan. If you haven’t got the equipment, send her somewhere that does.”
The nurse’s aide put a finger to her lips and looked about conspiratorially. “What I meant was what’s become of her. She walked, sometime last night.”
“Then she’s with my wife, Ann Schindler. Ann’s at the Red Stove Inn.”
The nurse’s aide brushed back her hair. “Not now she’s not. She’s in Dr. Bray’s office. She came here to see you—visiting’s at nine—and naturally Jan grabbed her right away. Jan’s Dr. Bray’s secretary.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The Howard boy’s gone, too. Everybody says they eloped.”
“She’s only sixteen, for Pete’s sake!”
“Shh!
You don’t know?”
“Get out of here,” Shields ordered her. “If you can’t find her, I’ll have to.”
The nurse’s aide left, looking offended; he picked up the telephone beside his bed and dialed the agency.
“View Motors. This is Bob Roberts.”
It was astonishingly good to hear Roberts’s voice. “Hello, Bob. Will Shields. How’s it going?”
“Good morning, Mr. Shields! Not too bad. Remember the big blue Linc?”
“You sold it?” Even the coffee tasted better.
“They signed ‘bout fifteen minutes ago. I had to give ’em a pretty good allowance, but I think it was justified. How are you feeling, Mr. Shields?”
“Not bad. I’m getting out of here as soon as I can get the paperwork done.”
There was a pause, slight but significant. “Mr. Shields, you haven’t heard anything about my daughter, have you?”
“Your daughter? Mrs. Howard?”
“No, my daughter Kate, Mr. Shields. Kate Roberts.”
“I don’t believe I’ve even heard her name before.”
“Or Judy Youngberg? Judy’s my granddaughter.”
“No, I haven’t,” Shields told him. “What happened?”
“Kate and Judy went over to Sally’s place last night, Mr. Shields. Mother—that’s my wife—had been trying to call Sally to tell her I was back safe. Mother doesn’t more than half believe me about all that happened, I’m afraid, but she’s glad I’m back just the same. Anyhow Sally didn’t answer, so Mother and Kate thought she was most likely asleep, with the bedroom phone pulled out. Mother wanted to stay home for when I got there, but she thought Sally ought to know. So Kate and Judy drove over.”
Shields said, “Go on.”
“Only Sally wasn’t there—she’d gone to the hospital to see Seth. She must have left her door unlocked, because Kate went inside and she didn’t have a key. Then there was some kind of accident.”
“Is she badly hurt, Bob?”
“She’s in a coma, there at the hospital, Mr. Shields, which is why I thought maybe you’d heard something I hadn’t. Mother’s there sitting with her.”
“You didn’t have to come to work today, Bob; you know that.”
“Sure, I figured, but it’s Saturday. Saturday’s usually a real good day for us, and I knew you wouldn’t be in. I couldn’t leave Teddie here all by himself.”
Shields reflected that there would be medical bills, in all probability. Bob’s daughter might have insurance, but it didn’t seem likely; in any case, insurance never paid the whole cost of treatment, no matter what they implied when you signed.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Shields?”
“To start with, make over the title of the Cherokee; we’re selling it back to Miss Lisa Solomon for one dollar and other considerations. Mail it.”
“That’s already taken care of, Mr. Shields. I did it this morning before anybody came in.”
“Good. Has she got the car yet?”
Shields could almost see Roberts shake his head. “No, not if you mean right this minute, Mr. Shields. I drove her back to Meadow Grass last night and dropped her off. She was worried on account of the horses—”
“That took some guts.”
A slight hesitation. “They were gone, Mr. Shields. I felt it as soon as we got there; so did she, I think. I went through the barn with her—there’s a couple horses missing—and through the lodge, too; but I knew there wasn’t any use in it. If there had been, I’m not sure I’d have done it.”
Shields said, “It took guts all the same.”
“Anyhow, I drove her car back here. I said if you could give it to her, I could fix her windshield. Pay for it, that is.”
“Bob—”
“That one’s on me, Mr. Shields. I’ll have the boys do it Monday, and I’ll write you a check.”
“Okay, Bob, if that’s how you want it.” Shields decided to try a shot in the dark himself. “Did you say your granddaughter was missing?”
“That’s right. We’re hoping she’ll turn up soon.”
“You were missing yourself yesterday, Bob.”
“That’s right, too, Mr. Shields.”
“Do you think that what happened to you could have happened to her?”
In the same flat voice, Roberts answered, “I suppose that’s possible.”
“So do I. There are a couple of other people missing as well. Do you know about that? My daughter and your grandson.”
For twenty seconds or so, Roberts did not speak. At last, when Shields was about to call his name, he said, “I see.”
“Here at the hospital they think they’ve gone off together; I hope to God that’s all it is. I want you to check with Mrs. Howard and see if she knows where they are. See her in person, understand?”

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