Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe (2 page)

“I say that. I say ‘just-harvested freshness’ when I’m talking to customers. You’ve been listening to me.”

“Only a very little bit, sir. Hardly at all.” Roy’s new refrigerator spoke rapidly, apparently to prevent his protesting the change of subject. “Since the dishwashing function could not be internal, it would have to be external. Utilizing the transformer principle made external dishwashing possible and, indeed, successful. It was then suggested that we might serve as programmable stoves as well. That was found to be impractical, since an oven would have to be internal. However—”

“Wait up!” Roy Tabak sat straight. “You said you were a dishwasher, right? You’re a dishwasher, too?”

“I am, sir. It is my glory.”

“Well, my sink’s full of dirty dishes. Let’s see you wash them.”

“Although I hesitate to correct you, sir, your sink is no longer filled with dirty dishes. I washed them in your absence, sir.”

Roy rose and looked into his sink. It was empty and spotless.

“Your dishes are in that cabinet, sir. There was an abundance of shelf space, and I felt—”

“Sure.” Roy opened a cabinet door. “You reached up there and put them in?”

“I did, sir. It was the only way—or so it appeared to me. May I continue, sir?”

He nodded.

“The oven requirement decided the matter. We could not function as programmable stoves. We could, however, apply our programmability to stove functions, by this means rendering a programmable stove superfluous. When one of us is in your kitchen, any old collection of oven and burners will do.”

“You can cook?” Roy asked.

“No, sir. The stove cooks, at my direction.”

“You can wash dishes.”

“Yes, sir. I can. I do.”

“Good.” Roy held up the almost invisible container; it showed green streaks of guavacado. “I want you to wash this dish. Now.”

For a moment it seemed that nothing had happened. He blinked, and realized that his new refrigerator was more humanoid in appearance that he had realized. It began to rock gently, forward and back.

“That’s all right,” he said. “You don’t really have to.”

His new refrigerator was not listening. It had stopped rocking and was smoothing its immaculate white apron with plump, ringless fingers. “This will take me only a moment, sir.”

While Roy watched, an obese blonde in a white dress and a white apron carried the green-smeared refrigerator dish to his sink, washed it, and dried it. “Where should I store this, sir?”

“Anyplace you want to,” Roy Tabak told her. “My stove can cook things, right? Under your direction?”

“That is correct, sir.” The obese blonde put it in the cabinet with his dishes.

“I’m going to go out and cruise for chicks, but I’d like something to eat first.”

The obese blonde smiled. “I shall be delighted to prepare it, sir.”

“That’s good. What’s your name, by the way?”

“I have none, sir. My owners say
Fridge
, or something of the kind, for the most part.” The fat blonde hesitated. “If I may be entirely frank, sir . . . ?”

Roy Tabak nodded.

“More often than not, no name is employed.”

He grinned, noticing the pin on her left breast. “Okay if I call you Frostfree?”

“Certainly, sir. I would treasure the appellation. It pertains to my mission in the most appropriate manner. You see, sir, the WSPC desires to free you—”

“Wait up. Can you cook and talk at the same time, Frostfree?”

“Certainly, sir. What would you like?”

“What ever you’ve got in there. It looked like lots of chow.”

“My menu-planning software is at your service, sir. Would you care for some
boeuf à la Bourguignonne
? I begin by slicing the beef into small cubes—”

“How long would it take?”

“My beef is of excellent quality, sir. Quite tender. No longer than three and half hours at most.”

“I don’t have that much time. What’s fast and good?”

“Would you consider eggs Columbus, sir? I have both small tomatoes and green peppers.” Frostfree filled a saucepan as she spoke. “And eggs, of course. Very fresh eggs, if I may say so. Your meal will be ready in twenty minutes.”

“Sounds good. You were going to tell me about this outfit you work for.”

“The WSPC? I’ll be happy to, sir.” She put the saucepan on a burner and turned it on. “The World Society for the Prevention of Curses seeks to exterminate those noxious prayers, orisons, and invocations whenever they have occurred. In your case, sir—”

“I’ve been cursed.”

“Precisely, sir. I believe I saw your salt and pepper . . .”

“Right here.” Roy Tabak moved his arm. “Who did it?”

“I cannot say, sir. That information was not part of the download. I am to free you from the curse. Others will attend to the perpetrator.”

For half a minute or more, Roy Tabak considered that. “You asked me if I knew the appliance industry. Remember?”

Frostfree nodded. She had dropped a tomato into the boiling water in the saucepan, and was holding its head down.

“I am. Only I’ve never even heard of a refrigerator that could turn into a woman. Maybe all this is just a bad dream, the curse and everything. What do you think?”

“I think that this has been boiled long enough for me to slip the skin off,” Frostfree murmured. “Ah! There it goes.”

“You had your hand in the boiling water,” Roy Tabak remarked. “Didn’t it hurt?”

“No, sir. I am an appliance, sir.” Frostfree smiled. “I was built in the twenty-third century, sir. I am native to the year twenty-two ninety-one—it is when the WSPC purchased me. May I speak of your curse, sir? You’ve been avoiding the matter.”

“You can jump around in time?”

“No, sir. The Society dispatched me to this period, sir. It will return me to my own period in due course, I believe.”

“You
believe
?”

“Yes, sir. It is a matter of faith—but yes, I do.” As she spoke, Frostfree picked up a pepper.

“How many of those are you going to make?” Roy Tabak asked.

“Four, sir. I have two tomatoes and two peppers, and four seems to me reasonable number.”

“I don’t eat more than two eggs, usually.”

“You have not tasted my eggs Columbus, sir.”

“I guess not.” Roy Tabak got out a fresh cigarette, examined it, and slipped it back into the pack. “Could you change back into a refrigerator so I could have another beer?”

“That is hardly necessary, sir.” Dropping her pepper into the boiling water, Frostfree turned to face him. Her apron swung aside, and the front of her dress with it. Reaching into herself, she took out a cold longneck and handed it to him.

“Did you just get thinner? I mean you’re still fat—I mean not really fat, but didn’t you lose a little bit of weight just now, maybe?”

She nodded. “The bottle you hold has been deducted from my gross mass. I take it that is what you meant.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“The World Society for the Prevention of Curses has been policing the past, sir. I was about to say so.” She dunked the pepper. “Hyperhistory rec ords many effectual cursings, including yours. They have done incalculable harm. The present brightens as they are removed.”

“My present or your present?”

“Both, sir. Or so I would hope.” Frostfree sighed. “Normally, sir, some bold but warmhearted individual volunteers to visit the past and lift the curse. In your case, that proved impossible.”

“I still don’t believe I’m under a curse,” Roy Tabak said. “I don’t buy that part at all. If I’m under a curse why would somebody send me a refrigerator that turns into a woman who can cook?”

“It is the nature of your curse, sir.” Frostfree stripped the skin from the pepper. “Your curse limits you to coldhearted persons. No warmhearted person will find you tolerable.”

“People buy from me,” Roy Tabak declared, “and it’s not just refrigerators. I sell stoves, grills, mixers, all kinds of stuff, and I’m one of the most successful salesmen at the store. Ask anybody.”

“Coldhearted persons find you sympathetic, sir.” With a deft twist of Roy Tabak’s paring knife, Frostfree disposed of the seedy interior of a tomato. “There are a great many of them in this century.”

Roy nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve noticed that about my customers.”

“Thus I was sent. I—I like you, sir.”

He twisted the cap from his beer. “I like you, too, Frostfree.”

“Do you really, sir?” Smiling, she turned to face him. “As a refrigerator, I have no heart at all.”

“Naturally,” Roy Tabak agreed.

“While as a woman, my ice-cube trays perform the function, sir. They’re in my ice maker. They have the little chambers, you see, and they expand and contract. It’s exactly like your human heart, but colder.”

It was excellent beer, Roy decided. Aloud he said, “It was one of my ex- girlfriends, wasn’t it? I think I could even guess which one.”

“I’m to find you a warmhearted young lady,” Frostfree told him. “If I can accomplish it, your curse will be broken. Will you please pass the pepper, sir? The pepper and the salt.”

It was shortly after ten when they strolled arm-in- arm into the Home Office Bar & Grill. “This is as good a spot as any,” Roy Tabak told Frostfree. “The real action won’t start until eleven or so, but it’s good to be a little early.” He leaned toward her, almost shouting to make himself heard. “Usually I sit at the bar, and it can be tough to get a seat there later.”

“We must have a table, sir,” she said as she sat down at one. “We must be seen together.”

He nodded, secretly glad that he had removed a head of cabbage and all of the remaining beer before they left. “Okay, here we are and everybody’s seeing us. Are you a good dancer?”

“No, sir. It might be better if we did not dance.”

Two blondes and a brunet came in, all talking at once.

“Do you like any of those, sir?” Frostfree leaned across the table.

“Yeah, Kay—that’s the brunet in the middle, only she turned me down flat last week.” A barmaid had appeared at Roy’s elbow, and he added, “What are you having, Frosty?”

“I haven’t decided.” Frostfree smiled at the barmaid. “What do you suggest?”

“Most people drink beer,” the barmaid told her. “We have Bud, Miller, Old Style, and a lot of foreign beers. Just about anything you want, really.”

Roy Tabak ordered a Miller Lite.

“Scotch and water might be nice,” Frostfree said.

Roy Tabak waited until the barmaid had gone before asking, “Can you really drink that?”

“I will drink it slowly, sir. I doubt that you will have to buy me another.”

“That’s not the point. You’re—” He choked it back. “I still don’t see how dating you is going to get me a girlfriend.”

“A warmhearted one, sir. One breaks curses, you see, by doing whatever the curse forbids. Let us suppose, for example, that a curse were to stipulate that you die before your twenty-first birthday.”

“I’m thirty-two already.”

“If you lived beyond your twenty-first birthday, the curse would be neutralized. Or let us say that your curse was in the form of a pig that followed you everywhere.”

“You’re really not all that stout.” Roy found he was shouting to make himself heard above “Gotta Shine.”

“Anyhow, I like you.”

“If you could slip into an elevator and shut its doors before the pig could follow, the curse would be broken. That is an actual case from the eleventh century, although of course no elevator was involved. Our operative dropped a portcullis, I believe.”

Their drinks arrived. Frostfree sipped and smiled.

“You can taste things.”

“Of course. It’s difficult to cook when one cannot.” She sipped again. “Please give me fifty dollars, sir.”

“What?”

“Fifty dollars. I would think that would suffice. A fifty-dollar bill might be best, but two twenties and a ten should be acceptable.”

“You need the money.”

“Yes, sir. I do.”

“To get me a warmhearted girlfriend.”

“Yes, sir. I will not hire her, sir.”

Roy Tabak shrugged. “You can’t get much for fifty anyway.”

“It depends upon the thing bought, sir. Passing it to me beneath the table might be prudent.”

He did, and she rose. “I must attend to a call of nature.” Her lips brushed his forehead, cold and firm.

He was still trying to imagine what a refrigerator might do in the lady’s room when she returned to their table. He raised an eyebrow. “Everything come out all right?”

“I believe so, sir. I emptied my drip pan, and my negotiations should be effectual.” She glanced to her left.

Their waitress and another were pushing through the throng of lookers and drinkers.

“It might be wisest if you said nothing, sir.”

Roy Tabak nodded.

The waitresses arrived, panting and pointing to Frostfree. “He said he couldn’t call you,” gasped the one who had served them.

The other added, “Your phone’s off. He said he’s dying!”

“He called here. He said you’d be here.”

Frostfree raised a hand. “Calm yourselves! The man is a hypochondriac, a faker. It probably isn’t serious at all.”

“But—”

“He just wants attention.” Frostfree sighed, her sigh visible but inaudible. “I suppose I have to go.”

“Yeah,” Roy put in. “Maybe you’d better.”

“You’re a darling.” Leaning over the table (in which something popped under the stress of her weight) she kissed him.

At the bar, Frostfree spoke urgently to Kay. Roy Tabak, watching and very much wishing he could overhear them, saw Kay nod reluctantly. A moment later, Kay and Frostfree turned to stare at him before resuming their conversation.

Before Frostfree had left, Kay rose, slipped through the crowd to Roy Tabak’s table, and sat. “Your friend told me about the awful thing that’s happened to you,” she said.

Roy nodded sadly without having the least idea what she was talking about.

“I don’t usually do this,” she said.

He stood as if to leave. “You don’t have to. Really you don’t.”

She stood, too. “Do you dance?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted, “but I’m not very good.”

“Just follow my lead, Roy.” Her smile was brightly encouraging. “Only do it, you know, in a man sort of way.”

“Like a mirror reflection.”