The Rise Of Ransom City Part 4

"I reckon there's a lot everyone can't name, Professor."

"True enough."

Those handsome trees gave way to a third kind, something gnarled and ugly that Carver did not name for me, our conversation having wandered onto other topics. Between the limbs of those trees there were spiderwebs, thick as cotton or the hair in an old man's ears. Then that scene too gave way. The road led us out from the trees and along the edge of a valley that opened out to the sunlit horizon. It was one of those sudden and always unexpected vistas of the Western Rim, that are like seeing the whole world all at once.

"You know," I said, "the man who figures out a way to bottle and sell such a scene to the people back East will be twice as rich as Mr. Alfred Baxter on his best day."

"Could be," Carver said.

We were in the midst of this sort of repartee when he suddenly stiffened and cursed. He halted Golda with a tug on her reins and Mariette with a word. He walked to the edge of the road and he pulled his long hair back from his face and he looked out over the valley.

I asked Carver what he saw and he did not answer me. He walked to the back of the wagon and took the hatchet down from its hook. Ordinarily we used it for cutting firewood or clearing deadfalls from the road, or we used the blunt back-side for striking the Apparatus when the cylinders jammed. Still it was quite fearsome the way he held it now.

I said, "What?"

He shrugged off his jacket and his already loose neck-tie and hung them from the big lever on the back of the Apparatus and said, "Stay."

It was hard to say whether he was speaking to me or the horses. I was somewhat insulted at being spoken to in that way by my a.s.sistant, though I guessed it had been so long since he'd been paid that that word no longer fairly described our relationship.

He turned his back and set off down the slope, with that bow-legged walk people have when they are balancing on a steep incline. It is something like the way bad actors walk to show that they are drunk.

His shoulders sank below the level of the road and then his head.

This was somewhat out of the ordinary for Mr. Carver, who was ordinarily level-headed and solid and silent and stable. He kept his own counsel and I was not allowed to look in his suitcases, but he was not p.r.o.ne to this sort of vanishing act.

I walked to the edge of the road and looked out over the valley. Mr. Carver was a small bow-legged shape moving quickly down and into the distance. Beyond him the ground rolled up and down in the usual way- there were trees and rocks and black bushes. I did not see what had caught his attention.

"You stay," I said, patting Mariette's flank. "Keep the Apparatus safe and there's a raise in it for you when I get back."

I set off after Carver.

He was moving fast and I quickly regretted the brief time I had wasted bantering with the horses, because I nearly lost sight of him.

The earth fell and rose. I caught sight of Mr. Carver black against the sky as he climbed high ground ahead. He crouched, steadying himself with his left hand on the ground and the ax out in his right.

I followed him. It seemed like we had been walking a long time and I began to worry about the Apparatus and considered turning back, but was unsure of the way. I could not imagine what he had heard or smelled or intuited so far from the road. I strained my ears and I sniffed the air and for a long time all I heard or scented was sun and dust and wind. Then at last there was a faint scent of burning.

When I caught up with Mr. Carver he was standing at the edge of a wide expanse of smooth gray rock. At the far edge of the expanse the rock rose in forms a little like breaking waves and among them there were the dark and narrow mouths of caves. In front of them was a great heap of charred wood.

Mr. Carver stood with the ax loose in his right hand. He did not turn to look at me but I knew him very well and I knew that he was aware of my presence.

I looked down and beneath my feet the rock was carved in the looping intricate designs of the Folk, and I realized that I had stepped on some sign or sigil of theirs, and maybe I only fancied that a sudden pain shot through my leg as if I had stepped on a snake. "Mr. Carver," I said.

He ignored me. He strode across the plain of rock as if he were the master of it.

I think I said that there were Folk living south of East Conlan when I was a boy. From time to time one of the Folk and one of East Conlan's men might even meet, uneasily, in the woods. There was little or no regular commerce between us but there was rarely violence, so long as both parties maintained the proper att.i.tude of wary respect for the other's prerogatives. Our world and theirs were superimposed, and there was tension. What I mean is that one did not lightly trespa.s.s. There were all the usual stories about the Folk seizing and torturing travelers, out of sheer wickedness or for revenge or for breaking their rules, although I do not think it ever happened to anyone in particular. There were all the usual Folk-tales about curses and the evil eye and my sister Jess used to tell me that before I was born a girl from East Conlan who went trespa.s.sing in the woods was transformed into a hare.

"Mr. Carver," I repeated.

He knelt down by the mouth of a cave, where the heap of charred wood was scattered- except that it was not all wood. When my curiosity finally mastered my dread and I followed Carver I saw that as a matter of fact some of what I had taken for timber was bodies, burned.

They were the bodies of Folk, and there were seven of them. One could tell that they were Folk because of the long limbs and the useful-looking extra knuckle- though someone had severed the hands and feet from a couple of the bodies, maybe as trophies. The stones of their homes had been scattered and the wood used for the fire. Some other cruelties had been performed on the bodies, either before or after the burning. I will not recount those cruelties except to say that the man who did it was a monster.

I was aware of no appropriate prayers and so I just stayed silent for as long as I could stand.

"They say," I said, "that the Folk do not die the way you and I will one day die. That's the first thing every child learns about them. That they were made from a different plan when the world was different and that death for them is not final, but they return to the world, again and again, clothed in new-made flesh, as I once heard a Reverend put it."

"In the end, maybe," Carver said. His voice was flat. He had put the hatchet beside him on the ground.

"Do you think it's true? Would we know? Most people can't tell one from another anyhow. I don't know, you hear people say it but you hear people say a lot of things that aren't true. Like if you yawn without covering your mouth evil spirits get in and ride you. Or that burning a white calf keeps the rest of the herd safe from sickness. Or, well, you know."

Carver said nothing. No flies gathered on the bodies, but nor did they get up and walk. There were what might be tracks on the ground but they meant nothing to me. There were sigils carved in the rocks and I studied them curiously but I could learn nothing from them.

"It may yet be true," I said. "The world is very large and we do not know the tiniest part of it."

Sure that is trite, but it is true.

Carver stood. He scratched his beard.

I said, "I used to think long and hard about what it would be like. When I was a boy, I mean. It kept me awake at night. The coming back, I mean. Into the dark and back into the light again and again. Like it's said the Great Powers do. Like stars. Around and around. In fact it seemed to me that maybe it was only men like us for whom death is final, and that was a kind of mistake in our making. As if death is only a word and has no meaning of its own. I don't know. I've often said that it was one of the great inspirations for the Ransom Process. You've heard me say that. I said it back in Kenauk."

"Yeah."

I was ashamed that I had started talking about myself again, but it was only to fill the silence of the rocks and the big blue sky above and Carver and the blackened bodies.

"You got questions," Carver said. "Go on then."

"How did you know-?"

"Saw the smoke."

"Is that a fact. I didn't see a d.a.m.n thing, Mr. Carver. I guess I don't pay you enough."

"Huh," he said. He looked around. He traced one of the signs carved into the rock with a finger. He peered into one of the dark openings in the rock but did not go in. Neither of us did. You don't go crawling into the Folk's secret places if you know what's good for you.

"Was like you knew this was here," I said.

"Was it?"

"It was, Mr. Carver. It was."

"Told you I traveled when I was young. Said you wanted somebody who knew this country. Was I wrong?"

"I guess not. You visited with the Folk often, then?"

"In a manner of speaking."

There was a long silence.

"You know," I said, "I visited one of their places once."

"I know."

This surprised me and I did not know what to say. I was referring to an incident back in East Conlan, when I was a boy, that I have not yet written down here and maybe will not. Mr. Carver and I had never discussed the matter and I did not know that I wanted to discuss it all, and so instead of saying more about it I asked, "Who did this?"

"Someone hunting. Someone questioning. Someone prying into secrets." He glanced at me in a meaningful way. Then he looked around and I guess he saw something I didn't because he added, "Wolves."

"Wolves did this?"

"Wolves were here- led by men. One man. A hunter. A madman. Not the Line, then- the others. f.u.c.k."

"What did they want?"

"Who knows?"

I remembered the rumors I had heard in Kenauk, of Folk weapons and Folk magic at large on the roads of the Rim. I had not thought much of those rumors, but I guess someone took them seriously.

"f.u.c.k," said Mr. Carver.

"Nothing we can do here and we should move on."

Maybe you'll think me callous but soon enough I forgot about this incident. I have that cast of mind that can only think about a problem when it can be solved.

When we got back to the wagon there was a man and a woman in filthy rags peering into the back of it, most likely wondering how in the world to go about stealing the Apparatus and what they would do with it if they did, and we had a short successful scuffle. We had forgotten the hatchet up there on the rocks and I told Mr. Carver that I would ordinarily take it out of his back-pay, but that I was so relieved at our triumph over the would-be Apparatus-Thieves that I would overlook the matter. We bought a new hatchet in the next town over, and some other parts to mend what had been broken back in Kenauk, including an apothecary's full stock of gla.s.s jars. I haggled, Carver mended. He cursed and spat a lot and was back to his old self.

We ate at a saloon where I explained to the owners that I was a Vegetarian, and I explained what a Vegetarian was, and after they were done snickering they fed me well enough. I glanced at the other diners eating pork and beef and hardly thought about burned bodies at all. I struck up a conversation with a man who turned out to be a probate attorney, and I thought about mentioning the news about the Folk just west of town but I suspected from some other not especially agreeable political opinions he'd already expressed that he would say good riddance. So that was the last I thought about them until now. Instead we talked about the road ahead and I learned that the James River was unseasonably high and pa.s.sable only at the bridges, the nearest of which had been destroyed in the fighting. Travelers were detouring a day or two north-east to the Black Cut Bridge. So that was what we did.

Three high iron arches held the Black Cut Bridge aloft of the water. You could see them from miles away because the land around the river was muddy and flat. We approached through waterlogged wheel-ruts and the deep ridged tracks of Line motor-cars, that always looked kind of scaled to me, like they were dug by the bellies of great big snakes. Also there was a considerable concentration of horse s.h.i.t. Beneath the arches there were tents, and several motor-cars and one monstrous Ironclad with the blind eye of its cannon patiently regarding the road, and among the tents there were men in black uniforms going to and fro or shouting at each other or just standing all day foot-deep in mud and blank-eyed. In other words an encampment of the Line held the bridge. There was quite a crowd of travelers ahead of us waiting to pa.s.s, some being questioned and others searched, and among them I saw Elizabeth Harper and Old Man Harper.

The two of them were surrounded by a half-dozen soldiers of the Line. They were being questioned from all sides and it did not seem to be going well. The Linesmen had not yet drawn their guns but you could tell that it was only a matter of time. I saw this as a problem I could solve and I got to work.

"Stop them!" I yelled and I shoved my way through the crowd. "Stop them!" I repeated and I came up to where the Harpers were being questioned, and I held up one hand to dissuade the Linesmen from shooting me and with the other I seized Miss Harper by the arm and said, "Thought you'd got away from me, did you?"

I confess it delighted me to look in her eye and see that for once I knew what was going on, and she didn't.

I turned to the nearest Officer of the Line. They all look alike to me and I have never been able to figure out their ranks. I said, "Thank you for stopping these people, sir. I'm Harry Ransom, inventor and businessman, and these are my papers." And I began to show him the various licenses and pa.s.sports and authorizations I had had to purchase over the last year in order to do business in this part of the world, which was either Line territory or debatable territory and the Line has different forms for each. He was more interested in the Harpers than in me but a Linesman cannot resist the urge to study paperwork and authorizations.

"I am an honest businessman and I pay my dues, and these, sir, are my servants. I picked her up in Melville where she'd been arrested for fraud and him in Gooseneck where he was a vagrant and they fled from me in Kenauk where I had a dispute with the locals over money and they took with them their papers of service and no doubt they've burned them. What did they say they were, what lies did they tell you? Sir, they are mine. Had her for a year and the old fellow for two, I wish I could reward you for stopping them but . . ."

Well I had to talk a lot longer than I have rendered here, but I trust you get the gist. The Harpers played along smartly. At first they denied everything- then they started accusing me of withheld meals and other mistreatment. I noticed but did not let my eyes dwell too long on a photograph in the Linesman's hand of a man who kind of resembled Old Man Harper, though younger and handsome and smiling or at least less worn-out, and anyhow the picture was blurry as if the man in it were caught in the act of turning suddenly to shoot the photographer. The Linesman's eyes slowly dulled as he lost what little interest he'd ever had in me and eventually also the quite considerable interest he'd had in the Harpers. He filed away the photograph with a grunt and a shake of his head, and at last the Harpers were released into my custody. I was so pleased at my daring and ingenuity that I didn't mind when the officer discovered a deficiency in my licenses and a.s.sessed me a fine. Nor did I think much about what might be pursuing the Harpers, or that it might now be pursuing me, too.

We traveled together for some time after that- through the end of fall and into winter. At first they had no choice but to come with me, in case the Linesmen were watching, and after a while I think they decided the cover I offered was as good as any. They did not acknowledge what I had done for them and I did not mention it again. Sometimes I tried to puzzle them out, and other times we were too tired or too hungry or too hot or too cold or too lost to care about puzzles and mysteries. We were just on the road together.

CHAPTER 6.

SOME MORE PORTRAITS.

I. The Western Rim

The world is made up of an infinite number of words, but it contains only a finite quant.i.ty of paper and ink. I cannot describe every little town we pa.s.sed through or every person we met. But for the boys and girls who will be born in Ransom City and for all the generations to come I want to make some record of how things were.

There was a town called Mammoth that is worth recording for posterity. In a big red barn there they had a whole skeleton of a long-dead beast that they said was a monstrous precursor to human settlement or even Folk settlement, from back when the world was hardly made at all. Miss Harper suspected it was composited from bison but I was enthralled regardless. I displayed the Apparatus under the arch of its rib cage and its knuckly spine cast weird shadows on the ceiling.

The town of Izar had more dentists on Main Street than I could imagine was necessary or good for business or good for anyone's peace of mind. New Delacorte was built at the edge of a valley flooded with jewel-blue but lifeless water, stinking of salt and sulfur and dead fish, and n.o.body was willing to give me a satisfactory explanation as to how this came about. Dope fiends littered the streets of Caldwell, basking like lizards in the summer heat. In Kattagan a dispute over grave-rent threatened to turn violent. There was a store in Hamlin that sold nothing but candy! A hairy-knuckled woman on Main Street outside that extraordinary cornucopia thrust two live rattlesnakes up to my face as I stood sucking a mint and watching Carver water Mariette and Golda. She cut off both serpents' heads with a single snip of her scissors and purported to read my future in their throes. I had not solicited this service and I was vexed about paying for it.

The fattest man I have ever set eyes on was the Mayor of Ford. Flesh rolled down his body like foothills and if he had a nose I cannot say that it was distinguishable from any other mountainous swelling of his features. I would just as soon have bought tickets for the Mayor as for the Mammoth.

There were at least three Glendales in that part of the world, and one New Glendale. None of them stick in my mind much but the four Beck Brothers, who you may recall have joined up with our westward expedition, d.i.c.k, Erskine, Joshua and John, they say that they grew up in one of the Glendales, and they want me to say it was an excellent little town. However when I ask them for details they are stumped too.

In the hills above Marchoun the trees were turning green to red to gold, the same way the light of the Process sometimes does as it grows unpredictable. I thought that was beautiful, and said so. But what held the Harpers' attention was that two big Ironclads of the Line had been abandoned on Marchoun's Main Street, their crews mysteriously vanished, their cannon blind. The townsfolk had resigned themselves to the presence of those hulking machines and business went on around them- certainly n.o.body dared try to move them. I dallied awhile in Marchoun to pay court to a handsome woman who owned a general store.

Skewbald's Main Street was one long slavemarket where convicts and debtors and captured Folk stood chained to every storefront and porch in silent reproach, and we pa.s.sed the town by, stopping only as long as it took to re-shoe Mariette. The blacksmith in Skewbald mostly worked on chains and goads, and you would have thought some unease would show in his face, some hint of disturbed sleep or bad digestion, but in fact he was a smiling and handsome fellow. As we walked out I remarked that there is no justice in the world and Old Man Harper remarked that I was too old to be just learning that now.

In that part of the Western Rim there were many Folk still living free, but many in chains too. You did not see the great chained legions you hear they have down in the Deltas but it was not uncommon to see a small family of them, if that is the right word, in the fields of a farm as you pa.s.sed by or doing the worst work of any particular town. It mostly went unremarked-on. Liberationists did not get much of an audience out on the Rim. That was how it was in Ford, and Hamlin, and Izar, and other places. Ford was also haunted by a Spirit that resembled ball-lightning and darted up and down Main Street at dusk, causing strange moods in women. I did not see it myself but I heard about it and have no reason to doubt it, having seen stranger things in my time.

We stayed at one Mr. Bob Bolton's farm on top of Blue Hill. He was too poor for slaves but he had goats and an ear-trumpet and three beautiful daughters. This sounds like the start of a filthy joke but there is no punch-line. He'd had sons too but they had all gone off to be soldiers for one side or another, and most of them were dead. Down below in Sholl there was a post-office, and I spent all afternoon sitting on a fence beside a cold brown field composing letters to May, Jess, and Sue, and also to Mr. Alfred Baxter, though I did not send that last one. Miss Elizabeth Harper taught me a great deal about spelling and commas.

In the next town over I nearly fought a duel with a man who claimed I had stolen the plans from the Apparatus from him. I was too proud to back down, although I am a poor shot, not least because I have next to no sight in my left eye, as I believe I have mentioned. Fortunately when dawn came, bleak and wintry, he was so drunk that at the signal he turned and walked ten paces at a forty-five-degree angle to true and right into a tree, concussing himself.

In the town after that three salesmen of the Northern Lighting Corporation jumped me in the darkness and beat me for a minute or two.

II. The Northern Lighting Corporation

New Dreyfus was a mining town. It was like East Conlan only smaller and wilder and younger and more crowded, and it was built on lead-zinc, not coal, and there were slaves in the mines, which there were not in East Conlan. There were company stores and saloons all along New Dreyfus's Lead Street. It was a town that was suddenly rich in a way it did not know what to do with. I called in at the most prominent saloon- it had three stories, one more than any of its compet.i.tors, and the girls who waved from its balcony were the prettiest and best-dressed in town. I gambled for a while, losing money but making friends, which is my usual practice in a new town. Then I started in pitching the Ransom Process to anyone who would listen.