The Rise Of Ransom City Part 21

I returned to the Ormolu in triumph, this time onstage, under the lights- two nights only, and you may be sure that I drove a hard bargain with Mr. Quantrill, who I had not yet forgiven for his lack of loyalty. The crowd squeezed into the Theater until I thought it might burst. I showed them the automated orange tree and all the rest and I told tales about the Western Rim and the Miracle at White Rock and about Liv and Creedmoor and I guess I made some big promises I could not keep. Amaryllis joined me on stage- Adela would not. Big Charley Browder re-enacted the role of the giant Knoll- a gentler man you could never hope to meet- I do not know how he fared in the Battle of Jasper but he was big and gentle so I guess not so well. My friend Mr. Carson described my performance as "eccentric." Anyhow two nights of tale-telling in Jasper City made me twice as much money as I had made altogether in my life so far.

I was recognized in stores by sales clerks. Cabs stopped for me in the street. I received more letters than I could count- threats, pleas, propositions, challenges, invitations to speak or play cards or go into business- I read through heaps of the d.a.m.n things looking for word from my sisters that never came. I was questioned in the Senate by a row of silver-haired gentlemen in green leather chairs, all alike, both the chairs and the gentlemen, at least to my eye, about the War and about the Process and about my dispute with Mr. Baxter. I denounced Mr. Baxter as a liar and a fraud, and then since I was there I took the opportunity to lecture the Senate on my philosophy of Life and Business and the Future. I shall not deny that fame had its pleasures. That night I was forced to attend a ball thrown by some Senator's wife and only Adela's a.s.sistance saved me from humiliation- I never could dance.

I sat for photographs. If you have seen a photograph of me it most likely dates from that summer. There are two photographs in which I am sat between flags, there are several with Senators, there is a photograph in which I am standing beside a pile of junk which was a.s.sembled to pa.s.s for the Apparatus. There is one in which I am standing on the Ormolu's black stage in a white suit, arms outflung and smiling so care-free you could almost imagine it was the good old days and Mr. Carver was by my side. There is another in which Adela stands stiffly at my side, and the expression that appears on her face seems in hindsight to be a warning of what would happen. I don't know. I have never trusted photographs. Light was meant to move.

What happens when you are famous and much-loved in Jasper City in summer is that the city suddenly becomes full of beautiful women, to a degree of disproportion that defies the laws of chance. It was if some statistical demon like that hypothesized by Professor Fenglin of VU- I told you I was a learned man!- as if such a demon had set itself squatting at the gates of the city to throw out ordinary women and yank in the beautiful. Well anyhow I could not go any place in the city without being approached by one or more beautiful women with insincere smiles. I am only human and I will confess that I was often tempted, even after one such beauty who'd got me on my own laughed and leaned in close and whispered, "Jen wants you to know, Ransom, we're still watching. We'll have you in the end." That ruined the romantic mood- truth is I ran away, leaving her laughing on a barstool.

Meanwhile Mr. Baxter had gone silent. The stock of the Northern Lighting Corporation fell to next to nothing. Baxter's detectives no longer followed me- in fact they were nowhere to be seen. The Tribune reported that a man in uniform who resembled Plug-Ears was found dead in the river down by the Yards- I can only speculate as to how he came to that end. I was quoted in the newspapers as to how Old Man Baxter could not hold back the future forever. His lawyers would not comment on our dispute. I thought I had humiliated him, scared him into retreat. I got so confident and proud that I sat down and I wrote a letter to the proprietor of the Floating World, demanding the release of my sister- and I mailed it too. I received no response.

News of my doings and speculation as to when I would deliver on my promises drove the War off the front pages of the newspapers, so that Jasper hardly remarked upon the siege of Juniper, or the fighting down in the Deltas against the so-called Republican Baronies, or the birth of the Gibson Engine. The Tribune started to describe my Apparatus as a bomb, the word Apparatus being too many-lettered for their readers, and though this was both inaccurate & offensive to me it became popular, so that people sometimes shouted at me "Jasper's got the Bomb! Jasper's got the Bomb! Give 'em h.e.l.l, Ransom!" The fair & statuesque &c actress returned to the city and went to the Clarion to inform the public that she had always loved me, and had always known of my secret. Shortly thereafter she left the city once again and once again I can only speculate as to the reasons why. Truth is fame had gone to my head and I had kind of forgotten about her.

The Agent of the Gun Gentleman Jim Dark sent this letter to be published by the Evening Post- DEAR SIR I read with great entertainment all about how your friend Mr. Harry Ransom says he did for my comrade in arms Mr. Knoll at a place called White Rock. Now the world knows that I am a sporting man and I want it to be known that in my opinion White Rock was a fair fight and there are no hard feelings on my account. Mr. Ransom has no need to fear revenge from this quarter! But if we fancy a fair fight of our own against Mr. Ransom and his Apparatus then I do believe he is a sporting man too and as a sporting man he will not begrudge us that. As a matter of fact I do not see how I can well offer anything fairer.

I was showered with money from benefactors and investors and patriots and small boys who mailed me pennies wrapped in touching notes. I could have rebuilt the Apparatus a hundred times over, I could have gone into ma.s.s-production, I could have lit up all of Jasper City, except that I could not think straight or find time to work. I was always on the move. I was always waiting for Baxter's next move, or the Agents'. The chant of bomb- bomb-bomb was in my ears and I could not sleep right.

The Tribune was the first of the newspapers to question whether I was ever going to deliver the bomb. "The War presses ever closer. The clock stands at midnight and Jasper stands alone." After that the mood of the public turned and for a bad week or two not all of the things that were shouted on me in the street were friendly. A woman who was later discovered to be a refugee from the Rim and a widow chained herself in protest at my dallying to the railings of what I guess she thought was my workshop but were in fact the premises of the Ransome-with-anE Textile Co.- no relation. My investors demanded explanations from me. Mr. Carson wrote a story for the Evening Post all about the '91 Dash and how throughout the history of the West well-meaning people have looked to mountebanks and charlatans for salvation while the forces of wickedness get on with their business. His portrait of me fairly dripped venom. I have forgiven him now.

I do not know if Mr. Baxter's people had a hand in this change in the public's mood- I suspect so. Worse, Adela and I had a falling-out.

It was late summer. We were standing on the Rondel Bridge in a light afternoon rain. Adela had an umbrella and I did not. I used to say that after the sinking of the Damaris I had got as wet as I was going to in one lifetime and a little rain could not touch me. We looked down the river toward the place where she and I had nearly dueled- where we saw the submarine. The river was slate-gray and lonely- there was no traffic anymore from Juniper or Gibson City. She asked me what I thought I was doing and what I was going to do next. I said that I did not want to be a bomb-maker. She said that I had left myself with little choice. I said that I did not know about that, but I was sure would think of something, and she said that I was not a boy anymore and it was not a game. I took that badly and I told her that I believed she was just jealous of my sudden fame. She flushed and bit back what ever words came to her and turned and walked away. All I could see was the umbrella, joining a crowd of its fellows. I did not call after her to apologize. That is all I am willing to record of that conversation.

I guess fame had made me prideful and boorish. That does not take very long, as it turns out- it is as quick as a pot boiling over or the Process suddenly imbalancing and running wild. Anyhow I did not see her again for a while.

I continued to receive correspondence, and if the proportion of flattery was waning and the proportion of threats and condemnation was on the increase, well, it might always shift again tomorrow. I do not know how the letters all found me, wherever I was. There were letters pleading with me, there were letters accusing me of fraud, there were letters from people who said they remembered me from White Rock or the Rim. I received a letter from my sister May, at long last. It said that she had been removed from her religious community in the northern Territory and was being held in the custody of the Line at Archway Station, but that although the Linesmen were not religious and their machines were a form of blasphemy, she was not treated cruelly, and she prayed that I had not gotten myself and her into trouble that I could not get out of, because she could not help me and she did not think G.o.d was inclined to. The next day I received a letter from Mr. Baxter- it was the only letter he ever wrote to me, and it said nothing but Ransom. Are you ready to talk?

I got letters in bulk from my fellow inventors. It turned out that I was by no means the only entrepreneur or independent thinker whose work the Baxter Trust had attempted to steal- there were dozens of us. I got letters from the inventors of pedal-powered flying machines, miracle cures, moving images &c- all of them laboring under Mr. Baxter's lawsuits, forbidden to pursue their true calling, forbidden to call their work their own- most of them deeply mired in litigation in Jasper City's courts, some of them in the ninth or tenth year of their hopeless struggle. Mr. Angel Langhorne was from the Deltas and had invented a process for making rain, and a whole new mathematics for the description of clouds, and he wrote in a jagged hand that suggested that he had just recently been struck by lightning from one of his own Cloud-Seeding Rods. Mr. Beckman was a Jasper City native and had invented a form of risk-free financial insurance. Miss Fleming had invented the perfect pendulum. Mr. Lung had invented a new kind of soap. Mr. Catchet had invented a new kind of machine-gun, as if there weren't enough of those in the world already, but the muse cannot be denied. Miss Hazel Worth had invented a kind of asparagus that could grow in the most barren unmade lands of the Rim, boosting yields by an estimated factor of I-forget-what. Some of these people were in Jasper City- others were writing to me from the sticks. All of them were being crushed by Mr. Baxter's greedy hand- I guess it is not the worst thing the Line does by a long shot but it did not sit right with me. Anyhow they heard of my fame and of how I was for while the toast of the town and how for a while even Mr. Baxter seemed scared of me, and I guess they looked on me as a kind of leader. They looked to me for inspiration. I did not want to disappoint. I wrote back- I wrote them all great long letters full of advice about sticking to your guns and never giving up and grit and drive and how the future belonged to the free-thinkers and the dreamers. In fact I did little else but write those letters for about a week. I wish I had one of them now because they were good words and I may never wax so eloquent again. It was while I was writing to Mr. Angel Langhorne that I first came up with the notion that all of us free-thinkers and dreamers together could quit the Territory and leave behind Mr. Baxter and his money and his Injunctions and leave behind all the armies of the world and strike out for the West and build Ransom City.

Adela found me again. I did not answer my door when she first knocked, because I was busy writing to Mr. Lung about Ransom City, and because most people who knocked on my door in those days were not people I much wanted to see. The last time I opened my door a woman spat in my face. The day before Adela knocked on my door a smiling gentleman had pa.s.sed me in the street and tipped his hat to me and I was very much afraid that it had been Gentleman Jim Dark.

She knocked again, so loudly and fiercely that I thought maybe it was the detectives, my old friends the Pig and the Mosquito- poor old Plug-Ears having pa.s.sed on to the next world, in which I hope he will be a better sort of person. You would not think such a small woman could make such a racket.

I sealed my letter to Lung and put it in my pocket and considered departing through the window.

She called out my name. I ran to unlock the door.

"Adela," I said, "you look- well-I don't know, my manners have deserted me, it's the big city I blame for it- I don't know how to say it right."

Truth is she looked tired.

"Anyhow listen, Adela, listen to this, I want to tell you about Ransom City."

"Harry-"

"A change of plans. Forget Juniper. Forget fighting. No more fighting. A new place- out on the edge. We'll go together, you and me. Like back in the good old days with me and Carver."

"Harry, listen."

"Just let me read this letter to you. It's to Mr. Lung. Let me tell you about Lung, he's got ideas about public sanitation-"

"Who cares about Mr. Lung? Who's Mr. Lung? Harry, you have to help me-"

"I have a plan. I've got it all worked out. It's good you came, so you can hear it- I'm going to see Mr. Baxter again. Maybe tomorrow."

"You're going to make a deal with him?"

"I'm going to make him an offer. I've given them something to think about I reckon- the old man hasn't been spoken about in the news papers like that in sixty years I bet and his masters cannot be pleased with him. Do you know what my father once said to me- he said, 'Harry, you're more trouble than you're worth.' I believe Mr. Baxter knows that now."

"His men came to visit me last night again, Harry."

"What they want is the Process. They must know they can't have it by now, and the harder they try the more trouble I'll make, until the whole city's one big riot- now see what they really want is to be sure that the other side doesn't get it. So my offer is that Baxter gives me my apology and we square our accounts and I leave town- leave the Territory- head out West to the Rim and beyond the Rim- an undisclosed location- me and a few brave souls who want to build a new place. Lung's in, and Langhorne's in, so we shall not want for rain or soap."

She walked over to the bed and sat down on it. Adela weighed next to nothing but the thing was old and sagged anyhow, with a noise like a badly tuned organ.

"My father's in debt," she said.

"Isn't he a rich man- a baron or something, I can never remember how things work down there-"

"Richer men have bigger debts, Harry. Not all of that debt but a whole lot of it is held by one of Mr. Baxter's companies now, and his men let me know last night that he may just call it in. I don't think they were lying. They showed me the papers."

I sat down beside her, making the bed lurch like a ship at sea.

"I said I'd talk to Baxter- I said I'd come work for him, if that's what they want. I said I'll make what ever they want, and they can call it his. They said he doesn't have time to talk to me. They want you- they want your bomb."

"It's not a bomb."

"They'll talk to you."

"I guess they will."

I thought for a while.

"I don't know that I care much for your father from what you said about him, but I can plead his case too when I go see Mr. Baxter."

"I'm coming with you."

"You don't know what that place is like. It's full of their machines- it feels like the Engines themselves are watching you."

"I'm coming with you and that's that, Harry."

The next day we went together to Fenimore Island and Baxter's Tower. I wore my finest white suit. Adela wore a long black dress with dull sequins and frilled sleeves, that looked like she had taken it from the Ormolu's ridiculous wardrobes. She was silent and grim.

It was hot and it rained. It had been raining for a few days. The sky was the color of a Vessel's smoke-trail, with flashes of silver light behind.

That is what Jasper City is like at the end of summer. The upper reaches of Baxter's Tower were clouded and gray. You could make out what I guessed were two or three Heavier-Than-Air Vessels roosting on the distant roof, and there were bars on the window and more guards than ever at the gate- the whole thing had a kind of militarized quality. Whitewater rivers formed between cracks in the streets and trash rode the rapids. There were few people about. When I stood up on the steps across the street from Baxter's Tower I did not get the kind of crowd I would have hoped for, for what might be my last speech. Anyhow I said, "You know who I am- I guess you're wondering why I'm here." A little group of office-workers watched me. Their umbrellas made them look like glistening black mushrooms.

Adela stood beside me, and urged me in a whisper to keep quiet and say nothing foolish.

"If you don't recognize me from the newspapers, my name is Harry Ransom, inventor of the Ransom Light-Bringing Process, et cetera et cetera. I've told you I will give my Process to Jasper City and that is not a lie."

Somebody shouted, "The bomb!" I did not like that but I kept talking. "Now you'll have heard that Mr. Baxter and I have our disagreements. That is no lie either. There are questions about ownership and money and patents- you know how they say it's better not to learn how sausage is made- well, it's better not to know how the future is made, either. Suffice it to say that Mr. Baxter and I may be about to come to an agreement."

A few more umbrellas converged through the rain and joined my audience.

The guards at Baxter's gate wore caps and raincoats. They watched me with interest. I shouted so that they could hear me over the rain. "Mr. Baxter is a reasonable man- I don't care what you've heard about him. He is not a tyrant. You may have heard some people allege that Mr. Baxter is just a front-man for the forces of the Line, a traitor to the city that has made him great all these years, that he wants the Process for his masters- well, maybe- who knows?- not me. I have no evidence to prove that. He is a free and independent business-man-his Autobiography says so and why would he lie? All we want is the best interest of the city and the future. That is why we are meeting today. If Mr. Baxter were in league with the enemies of this city, would he let me, the inventor of the Ransom- ah, Bomb- would he let me just come and go? Of course not. Anyhow I expect to return to you in one hour with news- you can wait for me- you can tell the newspapers if you like- one hour!"

I jumped down from the stairs and walked up to the gate, smiling at the guards.

"Well then," I said. "It's me. I know he'll talk to me. And she's coming too. Take us to him."

Scowling, one of the guards reached out for my arm and I stepped back- and in the same instant a shot rang out behind me and a ragged hole appeared in the bronze-like metal of the gate, right where my head had been. I turned to look at the street behind but I could not tell who had fired- every single man and woman in the crowd looked just about equally sinister at that moment. The gate-guards ran to surround me and Adela while I was still reeling and numb and they took us inside in much the same way ants might carry a leaf.

The elevator took a very long time to reach the upper floors. The machinery ticked like a clock, creaked like an old house in a storm. I have taken riverboat-rides that did not seem to last so long. There were two private detectives in there with us, one at Adela's side and one at mine, so we were not free to speak. She looked afraid and unsure. I tried to buck up her spirits, through signals of my eyebrows and fingers and significant glances. The detectives were well trained and discreet and they said nothing. Adela stared ahead. After a while she took my hand and squeezed it, maybe for comfort and maybe just to shut me up. I recall that her hand felt cold.

The detectives searched us twice, at the beginning and the end of the elevator-ride. I bl.u.s.tered and cracked jokes to show I was not intimidated.

Mr. Baxter's room was the same as it was before, except for the addition of a second telegraph device and a few more a.s.sistants. The curtains were drawn. Cold electric-light came from white tubes that hung from brackets from the ceiling- that was different too. The lawyer Mr. Shelby was present, looking disheveled, his hair all gray and wild, like a man who has been woken in the middle of the night or a Vampire who has been woken in the middle of the day. The representative of the Line Mr. Watt was not present. The detective Mr. Gates appeared behind us without warning, closing the door. He was a consummate professional.

Baxter did not rise from his chair. He looked even smaller than last time, and I was not sure that under his blanket he had any legs at all. He cleared his throat for a while before he could speak.

"Ransom," he said. "And who's this?"

"Listen Baxter," I said, "I'm here to-"

"You're here to come work for us. I know it even if you don't. Are you tired of being played with yet, Professor Ransom?"

"d.a.m.n right I am. The first thing I want is an apology. The second thing I want is-"

"I don't mean by me, Professor- I am not a sporting man and I don't play games. I mean them."

I was kind of bewildered by this line of conversation, and looked to Adela to see what she made of it, but she just stood with her hands folded into her sleeves and her head down like a Silver City Nun at evening prayer.

"Not the wh.o.r.e up on the hill- not that buffoon Jim Dark, either- and by the by Professor Ransom I heard you got shot at down below. It was Mr. Dark, of course. I don't have a lot of fellow-feeling with Mr.

Dark but I understand the temptation- though in this case I imagine he wanted to stop you talking to me. My detectives can do only so much to police and protect you. That's why you won't be leaving here again, Mr. Ransom. You won't be making any more of your d.a.m.n speeches-"

"Now wait- now just wait- the whole city will soon know I'm here, Mr. Baxter-"

Adela said something but I did not stop to listen- I said, "You can't-"

"No, I'm not talking about the Adversary at all. I'm talking about the others. The Folk, as the vulgar call 'em. Dragged kicking and screaming, they should be. I'm going to be straight with you now Professor Ransom because there's not much time left. Trouble-makers at Juniper City. Gone too far. Listen. Last chance before the Engines take matters into their own, what's the word- last chance to deal with the human face, Professor Ransom. Don't look at me like that, Gates- I know my own business. Ransom, I know what the Process is. I know even if you don't. I know where you found it. You think it was an accident, Ransom- you think they don't have plans? You think they weren't watching- you want that? You like being used? Them or the Adversary or the Engines. , Ransom, this is your last chance and your best offer. You've played a good game and you've made things hard for us here in Jasper- you've shown me I have to make a deal. Well, this is the deal. I'll tell you the truth. This is as good a deal as you'll get. You're at the top now- well done. I'll tell you things even the Adversary doesn't know. I'll tell you how to take your destiny in your own two hands like a man and-" There was a sound of metal sc.r.a.ping. Mr. Baxter and Mr. Gates both turned to look at the telegraph devices- I guess they thought it was a message coming in. I knew better. The sound was familiar, happily so, and for a fraction of an instant it made me feel like I was back home backstage at the Ormolu, and I smiled.

It was the sound of a certain spring-powered device that Adela and I had developed for the use of the Amazing Amaryllis and Wise Master Lobsang and Mr. Bosko and the other players of the Ormolu Theater. It could be hidden under a long sleeve- like the ones Adela was wearing- and when triggered it could project a variety of items rapidly into the hand, including watches, cards, rings, flowers, and in this case a tiny silvery pistol, hardly bigger than a finger. The pistol must have been her work alone- it was not mine.

Onstage the device had seemed almost silent. In Baxter's big tiled room it echoed like an Engine accelerating, or maybe that was just my imagination.

Anyhow Adela had the gun in her hand in an instant and she fired.

She got Baxter in his chest, cutting short his speech- his head fell back and his shirt turned red.

Then one of the telegraph machines did begin speaking- I do not know what it was saying but it was very fast and high and ugly. Adela said that she was sorry, so very sorry, then she lifted the silvery little weapon to her own chin. She pulled the trigger and the silvery little cylinder rotated and there was a crack and a puff of smoke and a red hole opened in her left cheek. Her eyes rolled back and she moaned but did not drop the gun. The cylinder rotated again.

I jumped for her and grabbed her arm. So did Mr. Gates. I guess we had different reasons for trying to keep her alive, and I do not think he had her best interests at heart. We got her arm down and then I did not like the look on Mr. Gates's face, so I took a swing at it. Gates grunted, spat, and hit me back. I fell over.

"He's dead," Mr. Shelby said. "He's dead. I don't believe it. He's- he's dead."

The security men were holding Adela now, and they held her with blank expressions on their faces as she struggled, making noises that were not at all like words, and as Mr. Shelby began to berate them mercilessly for their incompetence. Gates strode over to the telegraph machine and tore off the paper, cursing at Mr. Baxter's a.s.sistants, who all stood around looking like puppets. My nose bled.

"Somebody get Watt," Gates said.

"Don't," Shelby said.

"Do it- they got to know. They got to know now."

"How did this happen? What do we do now? What will they do?" I could not think very clearly or very well down there on the floor. I got up and made a play for Mr. Gates's gun- that was not my worst idea ever but it was a long way from my best and pretty soon I was back on the floor again.

"You stay there, Ransom. You think it's over now? This was your plan, Professor? The old man was telling the truth- he was the last chance at the human face. What'll happen now- s.h.i.t, I don't even know what'll happen now."

I guess the rest is history.

CHAPTER 27.

THE BATTLE OF JASPER CITY.

Even while Mr. Gates's security men dragged me out by my arms, the late Mr. Baxter's office was already filling up with anxious a.s.sistants- with ambitious young schemers- with elderly executives crestfallen and hunched under the burden of the secret they now had to bear- with Officers of the Line, blank and professional. The telegraphs had both started to speak, like the Engines already knew what happened. I kicked as they dragged me down the hallway, the security men I mean, not the Engines, while meanwhile secretaries' made-up faces peered out of half-open doors, watching me go. They just about hurled me into the elevator, the security men, and then that whole rattling bra.s.s contraption dropped like a man being hanged. My breakfast got away from me.

I won't record for posterity the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt cell in which they held me, except to say that in Ransom City there will be no jail-cells, not ever. I was there four days before Mr. Gates came to visit me.

"Where's Adela?"

"Not a social call, Professor."

"Where is she?"

"You don't know how much trouble you've caused, Ransom. You and that b.l.o.o.d.y woman. What were you thinking?"

I protested-"I didn't know!" As the words came out of my mouth they struck me as un-gallant and so I said-"But I don't regret what she did."