The Rise Of Ransom City Part 12

"I'm glad you," I said. "I mean, well, you know. I'm glad you got out. Got free."

I was afraid.

I had once joined a munic.i.p.al chapter of the Liberationist Movement, and for two weeks I paid my weekly dues toward the cause of the end of bondage. I wondered whether I should mention that fact. I decided not to.

"I think there was a rocket," I said. "What happened to the Damaris, I mean. The Damaris was the name of the boat, if you don't know. I don't know whether you. I mean, it was the War again."

The one I took for their leader whispered a word. I did not understand it.

I do not know if they understood me. I think they did.

It was like when I met the giant Knoll at White Rock. What ever would happen, I could not talk my way out of it.

I thought of the stories of travelers waylaid by Folk, and tortured and killed, maybe for revenge or maybe because they have broken some rule of the Folk's world that they did not understand or maybe for no reason anyone has words for. I thought of Folk-tales of curses and transformations and the evil eye. I did not know if they meant me harm, and I do not know now. I thought they might harm me whether they meant to or not.

"You know," I said, "once, when I was a boy, back in a place we call East Conlan but I guess maybe you have a different name for it, I visited with some of your people. That is, I-"

I had a sudden apprehension of the strength with which they must have torn loose their chains from the wheel, the strength with which they must have split open the waterlogged coffin that was the hull of the Damaris, and risen from the muddy bottom of the river- the same strength with which they had turned its wheel for who knew how many long years. A chill ran through me.

I took a step back. They came closer. The fellow who wore the chain was at the forefront. I could see where it had broken, and I could see where it had scarred him.

I said, "My name's Harry Ransom," but of course that name meant nothing to them.

Then I had one of my moments of inspiration. I pulled out the pocketknife and I turned to the nearest tree and I carved into its soft mossy trunk a certain sign, one that I remembered very well and that I thought they might know.

They studied it in silence for a while, looking from the sign to me and back again, and then at each other, while I tried to explain how I came to know this thing and to talk about the Apparatus and about my dreams and my ambitions and my great and wonderful destiny, and why it would be a d.a.m.n shame for the world if I were to perish in that swamp. All together they began to roll their shoulders and shake their heads, and after a moment I realized that they were laughing, and not especially kindly, that is, they were laughing at me.

Well now. I guess I should explain, or otherwise just skip all this thrashing in the swamp and get straight to Jasper City and fame and fortune and the First and Second Battle and all the rest.

I have wrestled for a long time with how I will tell this or whether I should tell it at all, and maybe all I can do is write it all out and see how it looks.

This is about what I call the Ransom Process. I have to go back a way to tell this, back to when I was a boy, in good old East Conlan. If you like you may turn ahead to when I get to Jasper City.

I was fourteen years old. It was the summer of '83 or '84 or thereabouts. Conlan was halfway between what it had been when I was a child and what it was becoming, which is an outpost of the Line. I was living beneath my father's roof, or what was left of it- the old house and my father's business having been claimed by the Line. We were lodging on the south side of town. We kept different hours between all of his jobs and all of mine, and we did not speak.

For most of that summer I supported myself painting signs. I learned the trick of sign-painting from a book. The trick of persuading East Conlan's dour storekeeps that there was nothing more respectable or desirable than a brightly colored motto just like the storefronts of Jasper City- a place none of us had ever seen- well, that came naturally to me. I turned the town bright for a summer. My crowning achievement was a bird of paradise over Connolly's store. He asked why and I said why not. It blew down that winter.

Meanwhile my father vanished at night, or sometimes for days, running errands for Conlan's new management to New Foley, which was the next town over. His work, what ever it was, was secretive, unspoken. He was silent and often angry. And after all what was there to say? All day he served the Linesmen in various capacities that were degrading to a man of his pride- what would he talk about? What ever he had to say I did not want to hear it. I had my own obsessions. I would be free, wealthy, famous, great, I would bring Light to the world. I think I have written about how I climbed the tower on top of Grady's Hill with a kite and some wire in a thunderstorm- well, that was that summer. That was the state of my Great Work at the time. I had burns on both palms and let me tell you that is not a laughing matter for anyone who has to work for a living. My father called me a word in his buzzing old-country language that I guess meant fool. I could not or would not explain to him why I had done it.

We were alone in the house except that there was an old woman above us and a large number of feral cats in the rank weeds back of the house. May was the oldest of my sisters and she had gone off the month before with a revival of the Silver City faith. Sue was the next oldest and she had moved to New Foley with an insurance salesman, where she was living in wedded bliss and learning book-keeping. Jess was I guess sixteen at the time, and what ever aspirations she later had to the stage had not yet manifested themselves, except that she loved to dance. She spoke all the time about Jasper City and fame and fortune I do not think she knew what she would do to get there. She was living at the time with one of the young men who had used to work for Grady's Mine before the Line seized, and having been found surplus to requirements he now did nothing at all so far as I could tell except drink and brawl. His name was Joe or Jim or something of the kind. I disliked him and admired him, both at the same time, and now I do not remember what he looked like except that he was handsome, and dark, and had a curl of hair on his forehead that I reckon Jess liked. He was also stupid. I recall that he used to boast sometimes of his intention to take up arms in the service of the Gun, but the fact was that neither he nor anybody else in our backwater town knew how to do that. I cut him in on the sign-painting business because he was good at carrying buckets and ladders. Sometimes he and his fellows threw stones at the Line's concrete barracks on the north of town. So did my sister. So did I, on occasion. One of my sister's many talents is that she is as accurate with a stone as any Agent is with his Gun- it is mostly because of Jess that I am so quick at dodging stones and gla.s.ses thrown at my head, which has served me in good stead throughout my career. I am a bad shot. We all have our gifts.

Anyhow it was as we three were sitting by the old culvert east of town after one such glorious blow for the cause of freedom that the matter of my father came up in conversation. I guess one or other of us was talking about leaving town to strike out for fame and fortune and Joe said something about my father and how he vanished from town from time to time, and I said that he was running errands to New Foley, and Joe said that no such thing could be true, because Joe sometimes went to New Foley to drink away from the eyes of the New Management, and my father had not been seen there in years.

Joe's speculation was that my father was attempting to contact the Gun- or else that he was raising up some black magic of his own, out in the woods, a curse upon the New Management. Joe was a simple fellow and always certain that because my father had come to the West across the mountains from the old country, and because he spoke an old-country tongue, he must be in possession of old-country magic. To him this was elementary, and he did not like it when Jess and me mocked him.

"He's got a woman," Jess said. "Of course he has- a woman in a hut in the woods!"

I did not believe that any more than I believed the black-magic story, and I said so. Not because of the honor of my late departed mother, nor because in my eyes my father was a hundred years old and incapable of romance, but because if he had a woman he would surely be less angry and tired and hollow-eyed than he was. I said that he was going to New Foley to work, just like he said, because the old man had no leisure and no freedom for women or hijinks in the woods.

Jess said, "Yeah- and whose fault is that, then?"

She could be very cruel.

We argued, and Joe and my sister argued, and after a while there was a wager, I do not recall exactly who proposed it first. We were to follow my father and see who was right.

The next night we skulked in the yard with the weeds and the cats but he went nowhere but to bed. After that we forgot our wager for a while. You may recall that after I climbed Old Grady's tower with the kite and the baling-wire I was charged by the New Management and sentenced to a period of penal servitude. My experiment with the kite and the lightning in the thunderstorm on top the abandoned tower on Grady's Hill was in the view of the new authorities not the admirable curiosity of a young man of genius, but rather an instance of criminal trespa.s.s, aggravated by vandalism. I was therefore plenty busy and forbidden to leave town anyhow. My father went off without warning and came back once and then again and n.o.body thought to follow him. It was not until maybe a month later that my father announced at breakfast that he was leaving the next day to look for work in New Foley and would be gone for a long time, if all went well, and so it was time for me to be a man.

I am sorry to say that I was still only a boy. My servitude had expired the day before and I was free again and in the mood for adventure. Therefore I rounded up Jess and Joe and reminded them of our wager and the next day we followed the old man when he left.

The road from Conlan to Foley had not yet been widened for motor-cars. It wound through the woods. It was therefore possible to follow a man un.o.bserved, if one stuck to the trees and if that man was occupied with his own thoughts.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and hot, and the woods belonged to insects. They liked the taste of me and Joe but not Jess. Women have their ways, she explained.

My father walked west down the road for an hour or two. A wagon pa.s.sed and he refused a ride and did not make conversation. After that he sat on a fallen tree for another hour or more, at a place where the road turned north toward Foley. He had his pack at his feet and his great bald head in his hands. Then he stood very quick like he had seen us, but he had not. He swung his pack over his shoulder and set off west into the woods.

I had lost my wager.

The woods south of Conlan are nothing like the swamp I fetched up in after the Damaris sank, except in the way that all lonely places are the same. Conlan's woods were dry. Trees stuck up out of the ground tall and thin and regular like the bed of nails I once saw a circus-act lie down on out on the Rim. There was th.o.r.n.y brush everywhere. The ground was stony and uneven and rose up into a hundred tiny hills and shallow gulches, none of which had any names but all of which served to turn you around, so that it was notorious among the people of Conlan and Foley and Haman that to enter those woods was to get lost, sure as anything. We did not get far into the woods before Jess's nerve failed and she wanted to go back.

No-that is not the right way to say it. Truth is that Jess was always brave. But she had better sense than me. Joe did not understand that, and mocked her for cowardice. Hard words were exchanged in whispers. I was for pressing on too, because I could never stand to be thought a coward. In my time I have done a lot of stupid things for reasons of pride. In the end Jess turned back and Joe and me went on. I have mentioned her deft hand with a stone- well, as soon as our backs were turned she buzzed a stone to clip Joe's ear. He cursed. I thought my father would hear but I guess he did not.

Another difference between the swamps and the woods south of Conlan was silence. The swamps were full of strange and wet and unearthly noises, and the woods were silent. My father made no noise, and nor did Jess. Joe grunted and cursed, but he had the good sense to do so quietly. Even the insects were for the most part quiet. Sometimes one of them would make a whining sound that was as shocking in the silence as a gunshot.

n.o.body much lived in the woods outside of town and there was little in them of use to commerce or industry. My father stopped at no little huts, enjoyed the company of no women. Nor did he practice any black magic.

We got hungry. It began to get dark. My father produced a lantern from his pack. That made him a good deal easier to follow from a safe distance. Of course we would never find our way back without him.

Joe offered his speculation again that my father was conspiring with Agents of the Gun, and I said that he should hope that was not true, because the Agents would have no second thoughts about slitting the throats of spies.

We were still pretending not to be afraid. As the older of the two of us Joe was naturally determined to show that he was the braver of the two of us, and because I was who I am I was determined to show that it was me. Truth is we were both afraid. In no particular order we feared the dark, hunger, getting lost, wolves, snakes, silence, and Agents of the Gun who might be skulking and scheming in the wilderness and sharpening their throat-slitting knives. Soon enough we added Officers of the Line to that list of bogeymen. On our walk west we twice pa.s.sed old camp-sites. You could tell they had been occupied by Linesmen because of the kind of junk they leave behind. We did not know what business the Linesmen could have had in those parts but we did not like it. If they found us wandering in the woods there would be questioning.

We lost sight of my father's lantern. After a little argument we agreed to keep walking west, keeping the setting sun at our backs. That might take us in the direction of New Haman by morning.

Joe remarked that it was like we were out on the edge of the world, traveling in unmade lands, and you could not be sure which way you were going or if the sun would come up tomorrow. I told him I was not scared. I was.

Above all else we were afraid of the Folk.

I did not know how many of the Folk lived in the woods south of Conlan. n.o.body did. There was nothing very profitable in that wilderness and it was of no particular strategic importance to anyone and so great expanses of it were still unmapped. There was no question though that a sizable settlement of free Folk resided there, most likely in the triangle of land between Conlan and New Haman and the peak we called Old Man Hump. Sometimes a wagon on the road to Foley or Haman crossed paths with a half-dozen Folk going about their business, what ever that was. Once when I was sick a group of the Folk came to the outskirts of town, or so I heard, and the townspeople watched them watch us watching them for an hour or two before they turned back. It was said that Grady's Mine had been hollowed out of caves that had belonged to them. There had been violence back before I was born. Old-timers spoke darkly of witchcraft and curses and strange storms and devils of dust and stone and signs scratched on trees that could drive a man mad- all the usual sort of stories you hear everywhere. Grady brought in a Mother Superior of the Silver City faith to say blessings for his men, and a Master of the World Serpent faith to spit sickness upon his enemies, and in the end religion with the aid of dynamite proved more than a match for magic. Eventually a kind of entente was achieved, which is to say that Grady got his mine and the Folk got the woods and for the most part we each left each other alone. But if Joe and me blundered into one of their places there was no telling what they might do to us.

My father was well out of sight and hearing now and so to show each other that we were not afraid Joe and me were talking as loud as we pleased. He told me some blood-curdling stories he had heard about the Folk of the woods and the cruelties they visited on unfortunate travelers. I doubt that there was a word that he said that was not pure invention. I would like to say that I expressed my doubt of his stories but I did not. Truth is that I made up some of my own. Well, I have always been a good talker. I do not remember what ever I said but I remember that Joe's face went pale and he fell silent.

In the silence I began to speculate on the meaning of the Line camp-sites. Could they be looking for my father? Surely not- the camp-sites were old. If they wanted to question him, they would have arrested him in town. Perhaps they had decided that now that Conlan was under their management it was time to drive the Folk away from town, and further into the west. Maybe the camp-sites belonged to scouts, hunters, slave-takers.

It was full dark. To stop and wait out the night would be to admit that we were lost and so we crept along, feeling our way with our hands on th.o.r.n.y tree-trunks and rough rock. The first sign that we had walked into the territory of the Folk was when beneath my fingers I felt carved rock. It was a kind of twisted spiral, like a finger-tip, as I recall. Anyhow you could say it was frightening but now my curiosity was woken too. I had seen fragments of Folk carving before, sold back in town, but I had never seen their homes and I had never set eyes on the Folk themselves. Joe was for turning back. I was for pressing on. I got my way.

Soon enough we heard voices.

We were high up, I think. We had been climbing the slopes of Old Man Hump for some time. There were few trees but there were many tall rocks all around us. There was what I shall call moonlight for want of a better word, though it was somewhat redder than ordinary.

My father stood beneath one of those tall rocks. His back was to us and he was deep in conversation with one of the Folk, who sat cross-legged on top of the rock.

It was a woman. Long black hair fell into her lap. Otherwise she was naked, save for paintings and ornaments.

My father was speaking in his old-country language, that I had never taken the time to learn. He gestured vigorously with his hands, which he always used to do when speaking that language, and never did when speaking mine. I do not know what he was saying. Sometimes the Folk woman responded in her own language, and I do not know what that meant either.

The scene reminded me of an ill.u.s.tration from one of the Encyclopedias- the old-world knight serenading his love at her balcony.

"It is a woman," Joe said. "Jess had that right, all right-, but it's a woman of- that's filthy, Ransom. That's wicked. How could he. That's-"

I told him to shut up.

My father sounded angry. He sounded like he was begging, and he hated to beg. I heard him say one or two names that I recognized- people from back in East Conlan. Officials of the New Management.

The woman stood, and walked away. My father cursed and climbed up after her. I followed and then Joe followed me.

Pretty much n.o.body ever goes among Folk settlements except soldiers, slave-takers, and missionaries. Soldiers and slave-takers keep their opinions to themselves and missionaries are untrustworthy witnesses, and so few people are familiar with what it is like to walk in one of the places that remain in the possession of the Folk.

It is very hard to describe. Among the rocks there were huts made of stone and wood. They were very plain and simple in their shape but everything was carved, all over, in patterns of surpa.s.sing strangeness, that were beautiful from one angle and hideous from another. I closed one eye to look closer as my sight seemed to swim and discovered that when seen through different eyes the carvings took different forms- they changed like they were being spoken. It was like the whole place was one big carving, or the letters in one big word, and I wondered if that was what the whole western world was like before our forefathers all those years ago set foot across the mountains and began cutting down trees and building towns and making maps and damming rivers and naming things &c. There was no other kind of art that I could see, though who's to say I would have known it if I could see it- a cat might wander into East Conlan and stroll down Main Street never understanding the tenth part of anything he sees.

There were no luxuries, and as a matter of fact there were hardly any tools. I guess they had no time for those things. The carving absorbed their attention. They were desperate- they were right up against the wall. They had a whole lot to remember and write down before it vanished from the world. I know how that feels.

Joe kept whispering his disgust for the whole thing and I wished to all the powers that might exist in anybody's world that he would shut up. I did not dare say anything out loud. I did not even want to think too loud in my own head. I'd long since lost sight of my father and the woman and I was exploring for the sake of exploration. I guess I was trespa.s.sing but at the time I did not think about it that way.

I began to discern patterns in the carvings. I got down on my knees and I stretched on tip-toes to follow one particular design that ran like a thread through the whole pattern- an endless ever-renewing spiral- it is difficult to describe in words and I certainly do not intend to draw it and commit it to the mails! When the devotees of the World Serpent depict that wondrous creature eating its own tail, I think perhaps they are trying to reckon with the same great truth this pattern spoke of. I recalled a dream I had once had of one of the staircases in Grady's mansion climbing forever and ever in a circle, always returning to itself, and how in my dream there seemed no reason why the world should not be that way. It had that inner light I spoke of- as a matter of fact I believe it was light, or at least the word for it. A circle, like the sun, or like what goes on inside the sun. A map of a never-ending world. I struggled to commit it to memory. I fumbled in my pockets for paper and something to write with- something to p.r.i.c.k my finger with so that I could write- anyhow that is why I did not see that we were surrounded until it was too late.

Six of the Folk surrounded us- three in front of us and three behind. On either side of us there were tall rocks- we were in a kind of narrow defile. The Folk were not armed but they were none the less menacing for that.

I stood up straight.

"Let me explain," I said. "I am Harry Ransom, of East Conlan- you know my father. You have business with him- I know that- well, that's no concern of mine- but I am here with a business proposition of my own, and I apologize for not entering into this place with the proper formalities but I don't know what they are, and what I have to say is of the greatest possible value to you and me both, not to mention the whole wide world- you see I'm a scientist- I may look young but don't discount me- and my particular study is light. Do you know what I mean when I say scientist? I guess you do. All this stuff here- all this writing, n.o.body made all this by accident, did they? Well there's a whole lot I could offer you and a whole lot you can offer me, I mean for instance the meaning of this sign right here. . . ."

They looked to each other and began to make a noise that I did not recognize as laughter. As a matter of fact I did not realize it was laughter at all until I heard it again years later in the swamp, after the Damaris went down.

I guess maybe Joe was in some ways quicker on the up-take than me, because he took offense. He drew a knife from his belt and drew himself up to his full height and said that he did not see why any civilized and hard-working man should be insulted by woods-dwelling savages, whose proper place was as slaves, and that they might kill him if they chose but he would not be mocked by them. He started this speech in a man's deep voice but it broke halfway through to reveal the boy below. Then he swung clumsily at the nearest man of the Folk, who stepped aside as smoothly as if he was a ghost. I tried to hold Joe back but the next thing I saw was one of the Folk lifting a stone and buzzing it right at my head with accuracy equal to my sister's and with a smooth motion that would make the best ball-player in the Three Cities weep with envy. I spun and fell facedown. Everything went black. I think it is thanks to that incident that I have bad sight in one eye, as I think I already said.

I woke to voices. They spoke in the plain old accent of East Conlan, same as mine. I felt relief and despair both at the same time. My sister was there and my father was there too.

They had found me lying in a ditch not fifty feet south of town. All I can guess is that the Folk returned me there.

Joe never did return.

I said nothing about my encounter to anyone in East Conlan. I told Jess that all we'd learned about my father was that he had gone into the woods to drink in solitude, after which discovery Joe and me had a falling out and he got separated and I guess he got lost. My father asked what I was doing in the woods and I said that I was conducting experiments. I said that I had climbed a tree to see where I was going and had fallen out of it and that was how I had injured my head. Too much cleverness, not enough sense, my father said, and who could argue with him? The st.i.tches for the injury to my head and the bandages for my eye cost us both a lot more money and I was not able to return to my true calling, by which I mean the study of Light, for several months. When I did I threw out everything that had gone before. I had a new design to work from. Do not imagine it was easy.

I never did ask my father what he was doing in those woods. I guess he went to beg or haggle for what ever power the Folk might have to offer him. Something to settle scores or turn back the clock or make the world right for him again. He must have been very desperate to think they could or would help him but he would not be the first or the last to end up that way. I guess he never got what he was looking for because about a month after that night the Line sent soldiers into the woods. They said it was for our own protection after what happened to Joe but I do not believe that for a moment. They burned down most of the woods and drove the Folk west. We saw the smoke and the flashes and the bangs one morning and that was the end of that. Not long after that my father died- it was his heart that finally did for him.

Well anyhow as I stood there years later up to my knees in swamp-water and trembling with fear I remembered all this. The spiral sign that I carved on the tree to show to those Folk was one of the same signs that I had spied in the woods all those years ago. It was just one of many aspects or phases of the pattern that I had seen in the woods that night and every single one of them is carved into my memory. The Apparatus is constructed around a number of such signs. That is why it can do things that the Professors in Jasper City will tell you cannot be done. Part of it is made of the science of a different world. And part of it is mine. n.o.body has ever done that before.

Some of the Professors in Jasper City will tell you that the world is made of Ether, and some will tell you that it is made of Atoms. It is my opinion that it is made of words and signs.

Anyhow I tried to explain to those Folk about the Apparatus, talking mostly in gestures.

I was taking a gamble. For years I'd wondered why those fellows back in the woods west of Conlan had spared me and returned me to town. It doubted it was because of my charm and handsome smile, and I doubted that they were merciful, because they were surely not merciful with poor stupid Joe. Maybe they'd found my father too slow a study for their purposes- too old and set in his ways- maybe they'd looked to me instead. Had they wanted me to set eyes on that sign? Was it all an accident, had I stolen it, or was it a gift?

If I had not been meant to see the sign, maybe they would consider me a thief- but then maybe they were planning to kill me anyhow. If I had been meant to take it- and if these fellows were of the same leanings as those back in East Conlan, and who knows what sort of politics the Folk have, it was worth a roll of the dice in my opinion-if they had meant me to take it then maybe they would let me go, or even help me find my way out of the swamp. If there was a plan I was happy to go along with it. Anything to get out of that swamp.

I tried to explain all about the Apparatus. About how one day when I had got it working and when I had money to ma.s.s-produce it- I tried to explain about money- I did not know if they had anything like it, maybe they did- anyhow I said that one day there would be free Light and energy in every town everywhere in the world, and peace and prosperity and an end to meanness and cruelty and jealousy. I mentioned incidentally that it turned out to be one first-cla.s.s weapon but that was not what I had meant for it. Maybe they had other plans. I did not know. I had sometimes imagined that the Folk of East Conlan had meant me to see that sign so that I could bring peace and prosperity to the world, but their brothers and sisters of the Damaris didn't look like they cared too much for the world.

The laughter continued throughout my speech, and for a very long time after I was silent.

I can be a patient man but in the end I got irritated.

"Well," I said. "What is it? What's the answer? This is no joke- I stand before you as a-"

One of them raised a hand. I had visions of stone-throwing and losing my other eye and I ducked. When I stood straight again the Folk had turned and stopped laughing and were walking away.

If there is a moral to that story I guess it is that you do not always need to go to the ends of the world like Liv Alverhuysen and John Creedmoor did to discover wonderful and terrible things- sometimes they are in your own backyard. Or maybe it is that everything in this world is stolen, theft upon theft, and things happen for no good reason at all. Who knows. I can only say what happened.

I didn't follow them. I took the knife and cut a few thick lines through the sign I had made, reducing it to nonsense in case anyone should happen upon it, so that it could not fall into the wrong hands, or at least no wronger than it already had.

At first the bark was warm where I had carved the sign, then it went cool. I folded up the knife and walked away.

Eventually I found the tracks of the Line. They were raised on iron b.u.t.tresses like a bridge, twice the height of a man. The sun had risen by then and I walked in the tracks' shadow, following their straight route north-east until the swamp gave way to marsh, then gra.s.sland, then hills. The tracks turned north and I turned east, toward Jasper.*

*No part of Mr. Ransom's writings was so full of corrections and backtracking as this fifteenth chapter. Many lines were struck out, many paragraphs written over and over again. In places it is clear that pages were torn up and rewritten, leaving sentences cut in half. I obtained two copies of this chapter, one six years later than the other; I cannot say what happened to the third. Because of Mr. Ransom's copious corrections, they do not entirely match. The impression is one of great anxiety; perhaps a great anxiety to achieve scrupulous accuracy. I have made the best sense of it that I can. -EMC

CHAPTER 16.

THE END OF THE SECOND PART.