Free Home Fires by Gene Wolfe

once.”
    “Well, naturally she would.”
    Skip shook his head. “Not naturally at all, because that’s not really Chelle’s mother’s face. It’s the face of the Reanimation employee, an attractive woman about thirty-five whose name we don’t know.”
    “It’s mine now!”
    “You’re right, it is. And because it’s animated by your personality, it exhibits your characteristic facial expressions.” Skip paused, scanning the empty chairs as though gauging the reactions of a jury. “But suppose the woman you saw at that restaurant—the woman you didn’t recognize—didn’t recognize you at all, never having seen you. Suppose she recognized the face, a face she had seen on another woman last hundred-day or last year, a woman whom she and her male friend had been searching for.” He returned to his seat.
    “You mean they didn’t know that I’m me?”
    “No, I mean they don’t care. Do you think it would make any difference to them?”
    “Why, I have no idea!”
    “I don’t think it would. They’d have to assume that Reanimation will reclaim you eventually, wipe you, and replace you with the employee’s scan. When it does, the person they fear will be back. I say ‘they’ because I think it was the man who stabbed you. The woman must have told him who you were. My guess is that he jumped up to follow you. You didn’t see his face?”
    Vanessa shook her head. “His back was toward me. The woman was facing him.”
    “He will have followed you, I think, and stabbed you when he felt he had a chance to get away afterward. Your wound’s at the shoulder blade. That indicates a tall man holding his knife under his hand and stabbing down. It can’t have been a big knife, or he’d have done more damage, but presumably it was all he had. That means he wasn’t a pro. Can you describe the woman?”
    Vanessa pursed her lips.
    “Think back.”
    “I only saw her for a second or two. Wait. Round face, not bad-looking, thirtyish. Brown-blond hair over her forehead. Heavy, I think.”
    “She was sitting down when you saw her?”
    “Yes, that’s why I can’t be sure how tall she was. But she was eating something white, and it was probably mashed potatoes. So heavy. Besides, girls with round faces are usually fat.”
    Skip nodded. “Or vanilla ice cream, but I suppose that would be the same thing.”
    “I should be getting back to my office. Goodness only knows what’s been going on there.”
    “One last question.” Skip held out the slim brown shaver. “Why did you have this?”
    Vanessa screamed.
    *   *   *
     
    Back on deck, in a yellow deck chair flanked by empty chairs, Skip spoke into his mobile phone. “I want the Z man to check something out for me. A woman was stabbed on Seventy-second Street two weeks ago. She was taken to a hospital. Her name may be Vanessa Hennessey or Virginia Healy. It could also be something else. I want him to find which hospital and what address she gave, assuming she gave one. Have him talk to the investigating officer and find out as much as he can. If he can’t get a look at the weapon, tell him to get the officer to describe it.”
    Tooley said, “They’ll think we’re going to defend the offender, sir. Are we?”
    “No. Absolutely not. Tell him we want the offender caught as much as the police do, but we can’t reveal our connection yet. Soap him.”
    “Got it. Anything else?”
    “Not now,” Skip told him, and hung up.
    The prow was supposed to be off limits to passengers, but he went there anyway, finding a spot where few of those on deck could see him. A warm breeze toyed with the straw hat he had brought to ward off the sun, whispering in his ears and ruffling his shirt. Below him, the sharp prow split the self-healing sea. Beyond him, the tapered steel bowsprit, up-tilted and longer than many a street, pointed south. High overhead, two-score sailors labored, their cries no louder than the mewing of the gulls. Behind him, before him, and above