Free Home Fires by Gene Wolfe Page A

him, the sails did their work in silence, urging the immense square-rigger Rani south.
    Ever south.
    *   *   *
     
    He tried the door at 23C, which opened to his cabin card. Opening the bedroom door as well gave him the briefest glimpse of a naked man who sprang from the bed, scooped a bulky bundle off the floor, dashed out onto the veranda, and vaulted over the rail. Like late applause, something fell with a crash, knocked over by his swift passage.
    Skip shut the outer door and bolted it, then closed the veranda door and bolted that, too.
    “Sorry.” Chelle sounded sleepy. “I was supposed to lock you out. I forgot.”
    “That’s good. I need a place to sleep.”
    He had switched his mobile phone to VIBRATE , and it did. The tiny phone-pic showed Vanessa with shoulders bare and the end of a strip of tape barely visible. “Have you been looking for me? I’m in ten ninety-one J. I thought you might have forgotten.”
    “No,” Skip said, “but thank you for the offer. I do appreciate it.”
    “It would give me a chance to apologize.”
    “That’s hardly necessary,” he said, and hung up.
    Chelle yawned. “Who was that?”
    “Just a friend.” He sat down and took off his shoes.
    “I already know.”
    “In which case there’s no need to cross-examine me, and no need for me to lie.”
    “Aren’t you going to ask who I was sleeping with?”
    Skip unbuttoned his shirt. “If you want me to, yes. Not otherwise.”
    “You should be concerned. We’re contracted.”
    “I am concerned, but it doesn’t follow that I have to ask. Non sequitur .”
    “That’s good, because I’m not sure I can tell you. There was a party for us vets. Mother cooked it up for my benefit, I think. She must have pull with somebody.”
    “She doesn’t need it. She’s the social director.”
    “Really? She peeked in for a minute.”
    “Just doing her duty.”
    Chelle yawned again. “Anyway, I met a lot of people, and he was one of them. Just one of the guys.”
    “I see.”
    “I wasn’t looking for a reason to lock you out, if that’s what you think. If I had been, I wouldn’t have forgotten to bolt the door.”
    “That’s not what I think.”
    “Good. There’s booze in our little refrigerator. Can I get you to fix me a drink?”
    “Certainly.” Skip was taking off his trousers. “What would you like?”
    “Anything and soda. Anything and water, if there’s no soda.”
    There were three bottles of club soda. After striving vainly to recall her preferences of twenty-odd years earlier, he mixed club soda with the rum in a miniature bottle.
    “This is good. What is it?”
    He told her.
    “I know I’ll be hung over in the morning, but I’d rather not be tonight. Rum because of where we’re going, right?”
    “Right.”
    She finished it, set the glass on the floor beside the bed, and lay down again. “That was either Jim or Jerry, I’m pretty sure, only I’m not sure which. They looked a lot alike, and I kept getting them mixed up.”
    “Natural enough.”
    “You mean I was hammered. I wasn’t. I’d had two or three drinks, but I wasn’t even close to it. I remembered our cabin number, didn’t I?”
    “Obviously.” Skip slid between the sheets.
    “Do you remember what we were fighting about?”
    He shook his head. “Not at the moment.”
    “Me neither.” Chelle snuggled closer. “I’ll remember in the morning, but it’s gone now.”
    Much later, when she was sleeping, he heard her say, “Don? Don?… Kiss me, Don.”
    Then, “Where’s Don?”

REFLECTION 4
    Winds
     
    The wind has risen and the ship rolls. I don’t want to think of Chelle stumbling down that carpeted, cream-colored corridor with him, but the image returns each time I wipe it away. The roll throws them against one wall, then the other. Chelle giggles, and I know a deep despair.
    Some of his clothes may still be here. If they are, his passport may be in them, in a jacket pocket, if he wore a jacket. Certainly his wallet