The Rise Of Ransom City Part 15

"The Damaris- the self-playing piano- that is my work, sir. Did you think I would not find out- did you think you could boast and lie and claim it as your own and I would let the matter be- I am looking you in the face, sir, do you still claim it as your own?"

Amaryllis and a pair of stagehands watched us.

"Listen," I said. "We should be friends, Miss Kotan, you see I-"

I extended a hand toward her, in what I reckoned was a friendly way. She slapped it aside. I soon learned that this was a gesture recognized in the Code of Dueling of the n.o.bility of the Deltas, but at first I took it as mere rudeness, and was nonplussed.

CHAPTER 19.

THE DUEL.

"A duel," Amaryllis said. She swayed like she was about to swoon, but since n.o.body moved to catch her, she decided not to.

"A duel," Mr. Quantrill said. One of the stagehands had summoned him, or perhaps he had been alerted by Adela's shouting. In any case he stood stock-still with his arms folded, attempting to intimidate.

"Not in my theater," Mr. Quantrill said. "This isn't the Rim or the- what are you, Miss Kotan or Iermo what ever it is, you sound like you're from down in the Deltas, I know things are done differently there but this is Jasper City, you know? The duel has been banned for thirty years or more."

"It's a question of honor," Adela said.

"It's a question of aiding and abetting plain murder," Mr. Quantrill said.

She seemed to give this serious consideration. They say in story-books that her brow furrowed. Well, that is what happened.

"My quarrel is with Mr. Rawlins here. I don't-"

"Listen," I said. "You and me should talk, Miss Kotan- Adela-I mean-"

"Enough lies," she said.

Mr. Quantrill had been signaling with his eyebrows to the stagehands for some time, and they had been pretending not to understand for as long as they plausibly could, but now they sighed and stood and stepped toward Adela, meaning to subdue her. She drew a gun from beneath her coat and they sat down again at once.

Her coat was so battered and road-worn I could not to this day say what it was made of. It was a dusty rose-red. It had no b.u.t.tons and loose threads. She wore a white s.h.i.+rt and stiff trousers and no jewelry. Despite the poverty and disarray of her clothing- I shall not mention the condition of her hair- there was something unmistakably aristocratic about her. Above all her accent, which was that of the landowning cla.s.ses of the Delta territories, as Mr. Quantrill had observed- but also the way she stood, and the way she held her pistol, firmly but carelessly, like it was meant for art or sport and not for killing. I guessed that she was newly arrived in town.

Amaryllis said, "Hal, what's going on- who is this?"

"A good question," Mr. Quantrill said. "Mr. Rawlins?"

Before I could say anything Adela interrupted. "Mr. Rawlins is a thief- the worst kind of thief, the thief of another's hard work and genius and good name. The self-playing piano is mine. You cannot imagine the work that went into it. You cannot imagine what I sacrificed to be capable of it. I made it two years ago in Gibson City. I have no papers, only my word- which should be good enough for you people. I- I p.a.w.ned it."

She said that like she was confessing something awful.

"I had no choice," she said. "And then after what happened in Gibson I thought I should never see it again- well, I came to this city thinking to begin again, and what do I find as soon as I arrive but that this man is boasting that he created the piano himself and- Her eyes suddenly widened still further.

"Oh-are you all in on it?"

"Well now," Mr. Quantrill said, raising his hands. "Well now. This is between you and Mr. Rawlins, I think."

Adela turned to me. "Where is it?"

"It sank," I explained.

She laughed scornfully. Few people can accomplish this trick. I guess it is one of the things they teach young ladies of the Deltas, along with comportment and poise and table-manners.

"I don't believe you."

"Do you see it here, ma'am? I tried to save it, but it went down with the boat. There was an incident involving an Engine."

"How can I believe a word you say?"

"It isn't what you think it is," I said. "You're seeing wickedness where there's only the usual run of accidents and bad luck and confusion. Listen-"

"I've heard enough."

Well, this all went on for some time. I tried to explain. Adela accused and demanded that honor be satisfied. I want to say that I made a decent effort to talk her out of that course of action. I said that we should resolve our dispute through words. She accused me of cowardice. I said that I did not know how things were done down in the Deltas but out on the Rim young women did not duel- well, of course that was not the right thing to say- my excuse is that her gun was still menacing me and I could not think straight. I was in fact starting to get angry myself. I offered to write a letter to Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson at the Evening Post correcting his misunderstandings and giving credit where credit was due. She said that made no difference- the insult was already given- she was not here to haggle or litigate, but to resolve things with honor. Besides, she would not believe that the piano was lost, but maintained that I had hidden it somewhere or dismantled it for parts.

I was not sure whether she was very brave or whether she was a young woman in a kind of panic- it seemed likely to me that she had not eaten right or slept in a safe place in many days, and I knew what it was like to have one's one and only sc.r.a.p of pride and hope in the whole big hostile world s.n.a.t.c.hed away. I did not want to be shot and I did not want to shoot her, because first I am not a violent man, and second she was a woman, and third I recognized her predicament and understood that my careless boasting was partly to blame, and above all fourth because the mind that built the self-playing piano was too precious and beautiful to waste.

On the other hand I am only human and you can call me a thief and a liar and a coward only so many times before I get mad.

I said "All right, d.a.m.n it- you'll have your duel."

She instantly calmed. It was as if I had promised her something of great importance. She lowered her gun and said, "Thank you, Mr. Rawlins."

"I don't know how they do it down in the Deltas, ma'am. I'm no aristocrat. I was raised without land or any particular kind of honor and while you were probably learning deportment or how to hunt with hounds or something I was selling Encyclopedias. But I've been out on the Rim for long enough to know a thing or two about honor and about guns. You should know that this won't be my first duel."

In my time I had done a lot of stupid things for reasons of pride, but I had only fought one previous duel. That was also over a question of pride of authors.h.i.+p- that time it was over who had first invented the Ransom Free-Energy process. Right was on my side and fortune favored me. My opponent had stumbled drunk into a tree and pa.s.sed out. That was the way things were done on the Western Rim. I was kind of hoping that something similar might happen here.

"Not in my theater," Mr. Quantrill said.

"Of course," I said. "We'll need to find some suitable location."

"Of course," she agreed.

"Good-well, what's more, ma'am, out on the Rim when we do this we do it at dawn. Only murderers shoot each other by night- it wouldn't be honorable."

She pushed back her hair and scratched her head. It was obvious that she had not thought very hard or very carefully about her plan. That is often what happens when people get their heads all filled with honor, I have noticed.

"That's true," she said. "I believe you're right."

It was a little after midnight, and mid-summer-dawn was several hours away. I thought this might give her time to change her mind.

"Besides," I said, "I don't have a gun. You're new in town, right, ma'am?- well not everyone here carries a gun all the time, you'll find. I a.s.sume you don't mean to shoot an unarmed man. I don't know much about how things are done in the Deltas but-"

One of the stagehands interrupted to observe that Mr. Barnabas Busby Bosko, Wizard of the Western Rim, used two guns in his act, one of which was fake but one of which was real, and that Mr. Bosko surely would not mind if I borrowed it.

"Thank you," Adela said.

"Yes," I sighed. "Thank you very much."

A small party emerged from the back of the Ormolu Theater into the warm summer night. Adela and I led the pack. Mr. Quantrill walked behind us. I think he was mostly concerned to ensure that we did not simply shoot each other on his premises and cause him trouble with the police. The Amazing Amaryllis walked beside him, sometimes leaning on his arm, wearing his coat over her frilled and sequined stage-clothes. She said that she was concerned for my safety and I think that she was, but that also she was worried about her investment, and the plans we had made and what I had promised her, the very latest science &c.

The two stagehands brought up the rear. I guess they had nothing better to do. They tried to make a wager, whispering, but I think they could not come to terms on odds. They made ungentlemanly remarks about Adela and unflattering remarks about me. They had a bottle of wine each, which they shared with the Amazing Amaryllis and Mr. Quantrill.

The sky over Swing Street was a cloak of black velvet, sequined with stars. I remarked on its beauty to Adela, thinking I might distract her from her plans.

"You talk too much, Mr. Rawlins."

"One of these days I guess I'll get myself into trouble." She didn't find that funny.

"We need someplace quiet," she said.

"This is Swing Street," Mr. Quantrill said. "It doesn't get quiet."

"The bars never close," I agreed, "and there isn't a single alley that doesn't contain at least one drunk. We'll need to head east."

Mr. Quantrill wanted us away from his theater, and I wanted to postpone the moment as long as possible, in hopes that I might talk some sense into her. She did not strike me as naturally the killing type and I wondered what had happened to her to make her that way.

I suggested that we head toward Reynald Park. That was an expanse of unkempt lawn with some scraggly trees and per sis tent tent habitations on the eastern edge of Hoo Lai. Well, when we got there, there were policemen. I had guessed that there would be- I often go walking at night when I am thinking and I cannot sleep, and I had noticed that there was a police-station next to the park and a bar where the policemen drank. So we turned back.

We walked down streets of houses, lit or unlit windows, the occasional gas lamp illuminating stone steps and narrow gardens and addresses.

"You can't duel on somebody's doorstep," I said. "Not without an invitation. That would be vulgar."

Next we found ourselves near an expanse of ware houses and workhouses with the banners of the Baxter Trust on their square ugly roofs, and though the streets were empty dogs behind fences set up a racket, and the lights of night.w.a.tchmen drifted toward us, and we drifted away.

"The cemetery," Mr. Quantrill said, "Up on Wyte Hill- it's a long walk but-"

"You can't duel in a cemetery," Adela said. "The Code forbids it."

"Besides," I said, "it would be bad for morale."

You may duel in the vacant yard of a Smiler meeting-house, or so Adela said, the Code of the Deltas cares nothing for the Brothers of the New Thought, but there were policemen around in the street outside the meeting-house.

The policemen were going door to door down the street, waking men in nights.h.i.+rts and women holding babies and asking questions. I do not know what they were looking for but they stopped and questioned us too. We said we were theater-types and that seemed sufficient to explain what we were doing wandering about aimlessly in the small hours of the morning- by that stage the sky was beginning just subtly to lighten in the west.

I was scared- I do not mean to deny that I was scared both of being shot and of shooting someone. But nor did I want to be a coward in anyone's eyes, least of all my own. I asked Amaryllis if she would take word, if I was shot, to my sisters, and she asked what sisters, and I had to say, well, forget it, and that it did not matter.

We headed toward the river. There were more policemen in the streets. It seemed there were more than was usual. I did not know what to expect in the way of policing from a town like Jasper, but Mr. Quantrill did and he also seemed discomforted. He wondered whether maybe another Senator had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, or an Agent spotted in town.

The omnipresence of policemen began to frustrate me and unnerve me, so that I almost forgot that the policemen were the only thing between me and the duel. Amaryllis speculated jokingly that maybe the notorious John Creedmoor or Harry Ransom themselves had been spotted in Jasper City. Amaryllis had been drinking, too. One of the stagehands suggested that maybe they were experimenting with their secret weapon in a bas.e.m.e.nt somewhere and were about to blow up the whole d.a.m.n city if the cops didn't catch them in time. The other stagehand said that wasn't funny.

When I say policemen, I mean that some of them were policemen, and some I think were members of the Jasper City militia, you could tell because they wore different uniforms, and carried rifles not handguns, and had a different kind of dully gleaming copper badge. Some of them wore no uniform at all, or no uniform any of us could recognize.

I guess you could call this a portrait of Adela. It's what she told me about herself, anyhow.

A Portrait of Adela "It's an extraordinary creation," I said. "The piano, I mean. How did you come to-?"

She shook her head. "It's a toy."

"You'd shoot a man over a toy?"

"It's a question of principle, Mr. Rawlins. It's the last thing I have left."

"I know that feeling, Miss Adela, I know that feeling well. I am a kind of entrepreneur and inventor and traveler myself, and I know what it's like to be down. I'm from a town called Hamlin. You sound like you're up from the Deltas."

"You know that's true, Mr. Rawlins. Why do you care to ask? What business is it of yours to interrogate-?"

"I'd like to know where the piano came from. It was just about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen- maybe the second after some work of my own- and I don't get many chances to talk to anybody who understands about that kind of work. Anyhow I'd like to know who's about to shoot who."

"My name is Adela Kotan Iermo. I am the third daughter and the fifth child of the sixth Baron of Iermo. I was taught to shoot by one of my father's retainers. He did not want to teach a girl to shoot but my money was good. Have no doubt about who will be shooting whom, Mr. Rawlins. Because you apologized I will aim for the leg- the Code permits that mercy."

"Well that's a fine offer- I'll try to do likewise but I make no promises. Put a gun in my hand and just about anything might happen. n.o.body ever taught me to shoot unless you count my sister Jess and that was only throwing stones at cats. My father had no retainers nor money. What's Iermo like? I've never been to the Deltas."

"It's the seventh or the eighth wealthiest of the Baronies. It produces sugar and rice; my father or my brothers could tell you the tonnage, the revenues, the number of retainers and field-hands and men-at-arms-I don't know- I have been away for a long time, Mr. Rawlins, and things change fast these days. Do you want to hear about the sunsets or the dances or the rainy season or the sounds and smells of the jungle?"

"Oh," Amaryllis interrupted, "The jungles- is it true that-?"

Adela ignored her.

I said, "What does Kotan mean? It sounds like a Folk word." She shrugged. "It's a name. I have others- Adela Kotan Mor Chatillon Iermo and so on- each one a family of some small note and wealth in the Deltas- Kotan is named for some ruins. Now let me ask you a question, Mr. Rawlins- why did you lie about the piano? Was it pride? You had to have something to boast about and you did not care if it was yours or not- I've known many men like that."

"It was a misunderstanding. My own accomplishments are plenty noteworthy, ma'am, as a matter of fact. I have lived by my wits since I was a child. I built my own electrical engine at the age of fourteen-"

"Well so did I, Mr. Rawlins."

We traded boasts like that for a while, as we walked down toward the river. Some of the stink of the yards was in the air. I learned about her youthful investigations into electricity, magnetism, musicology, and logic. I told her about some of my own exploits, suitably disguised. I learned about the peculiar arrangement that governed her peculiar childhood, which was this. As is the custom among the land-owning cla.s.ses of the Deltas, her father settled a trust upon her and each of her siblings. In the case of Adela Kotan Iermo the family's lawyer- having recently contracted one of those brain-eating poxes that are fas.h.i.+onable in the hot & wet climate of the Deltas- committed an unpardonable drafting error, on account of which the young Adela acquired control of her fortune at the age of twelve, not twenty-one.

She was future-minded. She hired tutors, some from as far afield as Gibson City or Jasper. She learned mathematics, logic, music- of these only music was a fitting activity for a princess of the Deltas. When she began to learn mechanics and electrical engineering her father threatened to disown her. She caused a new house to be constructed for herself down beyond the fields at the edge of the floodplain- she was fifteen years old. She hired servants. Her father ranted and raved. Her eccentricities embarra.s.sed the family. Her brothers tried to seize her- she hired guards. She joined the Liberationists and she purchased and freed Folk in order to spite her father, and she attempted to learn their language because it could not be done. She conducted a precocious correspondence with the professors in Jasper City and Gibson, and unlike when I wrote to them she got a reply. She conducted experiments with magnetism and electricity. All of this sounded like just the life of freedom and greatness I had dreamed of back in East Conlan but Adela was unhappy about it, and I thought as I guess everybody sometimes does about how big and strange the world is. I told her about my vision of Light and she told me about her vision of the coming century, which was Automation. She said that in the century to come there would be no fields of toiling laborers- there would be leisure for all- there would be steam-power and clockwork. That tiny woman had row upon row of big mechanical men constructed, all stooping and cutting in unison. She made a kind of life. Nature does this sort of thing so easily the world is over-supplied with bugs and beetles that do just about nothing but move mindlessly and she did not see why human ingenuity should not do at least as well. Rust, balance, weeds, all gave her trouble. I imagine the mud-plain outside her house filling up with ranks of half-finished metal men who when the plain flooded looked like the victims of the kind of disaster that gets written about in the newspapers as far away as Jasper. It is possible in this way to burn through most of the fortune of a princess of the Deltas in less than ten years.

By the time she was nineteen years old she'd abandoned these clumsy early experiments, and was deeply engaged in the study of Mind. She fell in and out of love with one or more of the tutors. She developed a kind of a.n.a.lytical engine and a kind of complex abacus that played chess, though not well. She was accused of various kinds of witchcraft and of digging up the lost arts of the Folk. Somebody shot out one of her windows and somebody threw flaming torches at her door. Her father went to court to have her declared mad as a matter of law. I said that her father sounded like a terrible old monster and she took offense, informing me that her father was a brave man who had fought and won a half-dozen duels before he was twenty-two.

By the time she was twenty years old nearly all of the money was gone. The tutors had all gone back north, including the one she had thought she was in love with. She confessed to me that she did not understand love as well as she understood machines and I said that most people understood neither, so she had nothing to be ashamed of. She developed theories of pure mathematics regarding the operation of the Mind and its relations.h.i.+p to language and to music, and regarding the relations.h.i.+p between language and perception and naming and the creation of the world and the unmaking of the world that was here before and why things change as you press further west into what we sometimes in our arrogance call the unmade lands. All of this was intriguing to me but she could not explain it very clearly because we were interrupted firstly by policemen, and secondly by the Amazing Amaryllis, who wanted to know if Adela could build automata for her that would dance and sing and do coin-tricks, and thirdly by the increasingly urgent need to find a quiet and un.o.bserved place in which to shoot each other. It was nearly dawn.

With the last of the money she bought a ticket north out of the Deltas on a riverboat called the Swan of Guthrie. The ticket took her to the Three Cities. After that she did not know where to go or what to do with herself. The food in the north was too bland for her taste and the sky too pale and cold and the people too rude. She was too proud to throw herself on the charity of the tutors who for years had consumed her fortune. She considered suicide. She lived for the better part of a year in Gibson City where she learned that being a princess of the Deltas meant nothing outside of the Deltas. She went hungry. She got into business with some people who cheated her. They did not believe she could do what she said she could do, so she made the piano for them to prove herself. They cheated her out of the last of her money but they could not figure out how to make a profit from the piano and so they did not bother to steal it. She p.a.w.ned it and that is how I guess it came to pa.s.s into the hands of John Southern of the Damaris. Adela would have retrieved it but before she could sc.r.a.pe together the money Gibson City had fallen to the Line and Adela herself was under arrest.

Mr. Quantrill interrupted. "What do you mean? The Line? Gibson City's neutral- same as Jasper- the Tri-City Territory, all three first among equals, you know . . ."