Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe (27 page)

I hummed the music my ma had hummed for me, and we danced. Miss Sophie seemed not to enjoy it too much, and kept her attention on the table whenever she could. That made the dance a mite awkward, as I needed to watch Chet. Then it occurred to me to look in the bar mirror whenever I faced away from the table, so I could always have it in view.

As he said he would, and talking in tones I could not hear, Chet reached, slow and sure, for Thad’s Colt and brought it out, aiming it at the ceiling. To my surprise, Renault did not gun him down, even when Chet reached for his little dude gun and pointed it the same way. Then he shut his eyes like someone handling a firearm for the first time and fired both weapons into the ceiling.

I stooped, caught Miss Sophie up on my shoulder, and carried her outside. This was not easy, because she fought at every step, hollering French words that no longer sounded genteel. Getting through the door and then hauling it shut behind me was a chore, as Miss Sophie clung to every surface we passed.

Once outside, I was confronted with a mob of curious faces, some of whom looked as though they might take exception to my mistreatment of Miss Sophie. I contrived to stand where she could grab at nothing, and I drew one of my weapons and pointed it at everyone’s faces. “First man to move, I shoot,” I assured them. “First woman to move . . . I shoot in the foot.”

They believed me, all right. Then, all of a sudden, Miss Sophie slumped, though the instant before she had not even begun to run down. I assumed that all her exertions had overcome her, as it would me if I wore garments pulled as tight as hers. I compelled two townsmen to take her from me and they commenced to try to awaken her, though without success.

For the full five minutes I held them at bay, and then, once the banker I had earlier expelled from Bust assured me the time had passed, I holstered my weapon and reentered the saloon, swinging its main doors wide open so others might enter. The crowd followed me.

My expectation was that I would find Chet dead and Renault ready for another duel. But that was not what I saw.

Both Chet and Renault lay on the floor, yards apart. From where they lay it was clear that they had been facing each other when both had been felled.

Chet had his shotgun across his chest. He still breathed, and there was no mark of violence upon him, but his eyes were closed and he could not be compelled to awaken.

Renault, on the other hand, was stone dead, so mutilated that it was clear that blasts from both shotgun barrels had struck him in the face. So gruesome was he that townsfolk tried to prevent their ladies and children from seeing his remains. I had not heard the shotgun discharge, yet here was indisputable proof that it had.

Renault’s revolver lay near his hand, except that it was not his revolver, it was Thad’s. Where Renault’s gun might have gone I had no idea. From the weapon’s condition we assured ourselves that it had been discharged, one cartridge having been fired. I did not mention that I had seen Chet fire that round.

I admit I could not fathom what had happened, even knowing more about events than the townsfolk. Chet had somehow taken and hidden Renault’s weapon, had given Uncle Thad’s Colt to Renault, had persuaded the Frenchman to stand in the center of the room, had killed Renault with a silent shotgun, and then had fainted. I did what my ma and pa had taught me as a child, and I stayed quiet.

In all the confusion, Vasquez joined us. He and I took charge, gathering up Chet’s possessions and Uncle Thad’s gun. We conveyed Chet to our hotel and summoned a doctor. Not long after, French soldiers came, demanding to take possession of Chet. But the two of us, joined by Texas soldiers and then townsfolk, our guns outnumbering those of the Frenchies, persuaded the intruders to leave.

I will notify you when I know Chet’s fate.

Mr. Simmons informs me that I should end this letter with the words “your obedient servant,” and I have informed him that such words are not for men. So I will say instead that I am,

Chet’s friend,

Henry Pfluger

June 7, 1891

From Chester Lamb, Salt Creek, Republic of Texas 

To Morris Levitt, Chicago, Illinois, United States

My dear Morris:

When I last wrote you, it was to let you know of my thoughts and activities the day before I was to die in a duel. After writing you, I prayed, then undressed and went to bed.

Some time later, I woke out of a fitful sleep with a thought fully formed in my mind.

The thought was the sum at the bottom of a column of numbers, except that the numbers were facts I had not hereto added together. I will remind you of some of them.

A hound who hated all men yet wagged its tail as Renault and Ma de moiselle Sophiepassedby.

The faintness of Renault’s voice, which required an effort to hear.

His lack of gallantry toward his ladies, his willingness for them to do all labor for him.

“He has never touched me.”

His lack of vulnerability to bullet or blade.

The ghastly image of Benjamin Franklin’s body, the metal mask shielding his features from onlookers.

The sum of these facts formed a new number, a new idea, and at that moment, I thought I knew how to defeat Renault.

Yet victory was not assured. My only assurance was that if I fled Salt Creek, or agreed to collaborate with Renault, then I would survive.

After a time, I determined that I could regard only with contempt the Chester Lamb who would decide in favor of assurance under those terms. I dressed in a hurry, took myself to Vasquez’s room, and knocked. He emerged, alert.

I told him my thought, and he assured me that pursuing it could not make his fate any more uncertain. I issued to him a series of instructions, some of them so ghastly that he had to fortify himself with another swallow of tequila. But he did dress and depart.

I returned to my chamber and commenced the task that would prevent me from joining Vasquez. I began to write. I wrote in haste and without consideration for style or brevity, for time was short.

Hours later, I collected the results of my labors in a pasteboard box, added my bottle of ink and a pen, and returned to my bed, where I was finally able to drift off to a short but restful sleep.

I awoke with the dawn and made preparations for what would be either my last day on earth or Renault’s. That is to say, I shaved, dressed, ensured that my derringer was loaded, and wrote a set of letters that would be posted in the event of my death. I descended and ate a hearty meal in the dining salon.

As I was drinking my last coffee, I saw Vasquez and Mr. Simmons through the window as they arrived on the buckboard. Simmons stayed with the wagon, his expression mournful, while Vasquez alighted. Moments later he was before me, grubby and weary but reporting success with every errand he had been charged to complete. As proof in part, he presented me with a bag containing Simmons’s shotgun and Thad’s Colt with its new grips.

The Kid joined us then. He tells me he has faithfully recounted all that he observed from that moment to the point I was carried to the hotel, so I will not revisit all those details.

You will recall that the Kid danced away from my table with the Frenchwoman.

In the moments after that, Renault stared at me again. “You have given us privacy so that you might accept my offer without that one overhearing?”

“No. Your offer is for men without honor.”

His face registered no disappointment. “Then you truly think I am in some danger.”

“I do,” I assured him. “Which I will demonstrate. But first, tell me—are you so fast on the draw that if I were to hold my weapons aloft, pointed at the ceiling, you could still draw and gun me down before I had you in my sights?”

“Yes.” There was no arrogance or even confidence in his tone. He answered as if I had merely asked him whether the sun was up.

“Will you, then, give me that small head start? Allow me to have my guns in hand so that I might die like a man?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I am reaching for them now. I will not turn them on you until we are both ready.” So saying, I slowly withdrew Thad’s Colt from my pocket and held it pointed upward. I repeated the action with my derringer. “Would you mind if I cocked both weapons before we do this?”

He gestured like a host offering a sideboard full of delicacies. “Be my guest.”

“Thank you.” I cocked the Colt, then the derringer.

“Now, Monsieur Lamb?”

Instead of responding, I clamped my eyes shut and pulled both triggers.

I did not aim my weapons before doing so, and because I gave no hint that I was ready to be shot, Renault had not even begun to move before I fired. Tremendous reports sounded in both my ears from inches away, deafening me. The rounds from the weapons crashed into the ceiling—or so I assumed. I did not hear or see them do so.

I stood, knocking my chair back into the partition, and sidled past the Kid’s chair. Keeping my legs pressed against the tabletop so that I would always know where I was, I moved around the table, past Mlle Sophie’s chair, and sat where Renault had been.

He was not there now. There was, in fact, no warmth in the wood beneath me to indicate anyone had recently been seated there.

I waited for the gunshot that would kill me, all the while hoping it would not come. And it did not.

I set the guns aside on the table and dragged the manuscript box to me. My eyes still shut, I threw off the box top. Within, by touch, I located the bottle of ink and the pen I had placed therein. They lay atop the papers I had written the night before, and I also assured myself that those pages were oriented correctly.

By touch alone, I unstoppered the bottle, dipped in the pen, and scrawled two words at the bottom of the topmost piece of paper. I transferred that sheet to the bottom of the pile of pages. Then, by memory, I began reviewing the words I had previously written and those I had just added.

I have those pages still, so I can quote them exactly.

While the Baghdad Kid and Renault’s lovely companion continued their oddly graceful dance to music only they could hear, I maintained my grip on my firearms and smiled at my opponent. “I am as great a sorcerer as the one who made you, Renault,” I told him.

His tone remained indifferent. “Summoned me back from my reward, you mean.”

“Made,” I insisted. “And the final step in my own enchantment will be the pulling of these triggers, an action even you are not fast enough to forestall. No—do not move, for I have you at my mercy, and I know your secret.

“You are not real, Renault. You do not exist. Ah, I see by your expression that I have struck to the pink. Your maker created twelve ideas, gave them volume and color and motion, but you do not exist as a physical thing. That dog, Mustard, could not hear or see or smell you, hence it wagged its welcome only to Mademoiselle Sophie as she passed. You barely whisper—we lean close, anticipating words, and we hear them, but it is only our own attention that makes this possible. Were you to be alone, all alone, with no one able to perceive you, you would fade away to nothing, which is why one of your ladies is always present. It was the sad mistake of Benjamin Franklin that he discerned part of your nature, but not all—he did not realize that hearing you would doom him as much as seeing you, and so you slew him.”

He shook his head, a flicker of true fear beginning to manifest in his eyes. “Someone who is not real cannot kill—”

“It is the belief of your victims that kills them, not bullets that do not exist from a gun that is not real. As the faithful can sometimes bleed spontaneously from their palms, side, and feet in emulation of Christ’s suffering, your victims accept their deaths and so manifest bullet wounds— wounds which, if opened, would yield no bullets.”

He was silent. At such a time, I would expect a mortal man to demonstrate frantic thinking in search of a way out, but he did no such thing.

“But do not grieve,” I told him. “Life is not your state, and death is not your fate. As you are unreal, so you are imperishable. You simply go to a place where you can no longer do harm.” So saying, I pulled the triggers of my weapons.

A tremendous roar shook the saloon, buffeting my ears, and the smell of gunpowder filled the air. And in that moment, Renault faded away like a specter glimpsed from the corner of the eye as one awakens.

Renault stared about himself, his expression one of wonder.

The estate was not great of size. He could see it to its borders in all directions, marked by a battlement- topped stone wall so high and featureless that he knew he would never be able to climb it. He was trapped here, contained until the day he might be needed once more.

But to be bound in such a place . . . To the south of the grass- topped hill on which he found himself was a village tucked away in a well- watered valley in the rolling land. Distant voices of singing came to his ears. All around him, the slopes of the hills were covered with vines heavy with grapes. And on the hilltop to his north, a house—a mansion of many wings and stories, white walls reflecting the bright summer sun, roof capped with rust-brown slates richly contrasting in color with the vines.

Renault took it all in. Then, for the first time in the century of his existence, he allowed himself the shadow of a smile.

My ears ringing but my heart light, I touched the pasteboard box that now held Renault, his mysteries and his dangers, within. His fate was sealed, with the fate of his fellow paladins soon to follow.

I sat back to await the return of the bartender. A brandy would be my modest celebration. And perhaps a cigar.

At the very end of the page are the words I penned while my eyes were closed, their letters awkward and overlapping but legible:

THE END

I was in the act of stoppering the bottle of ink when a great weariness and darkness overcame me. I collapsed onto my manuscript box and lay as insensate as the dead.

Why did I falter so? I do not know—such matters are, for the time being, beyond me. It seems possible that the same mental exertions that allowed us to hear Renault’s words were duplicated in the act of imagining him out of existence, and stole strength from me much as a sudden illness might. I did discover later that Mlles Sophie and Laurette, the first outside with the Kid and the second back at Fort Cow, also collapsed at about the same moment, each of them taking a full day to recover.