The Rise Of Ransom City Part 23

"That's where you come in, Ransom," said Mr. Lime, who was as cheerful and friendly that day as any Officer of the Line has ever been.

"One day we'll burn down their Lodge itself, Ransom. One day. And that's where you and your Bomb come in."

He put a hand on my shoulder. That is the only time I have ever been touched in a friendly way by an Officer of the Line and I did not know how to respond.

"We'll settle business with the city soon enough," he said. "Then we'll get to work."

I've heard all the rumors about how in the last days of the fighting Liv and John Creedmoor showed up to join in the excitement. According to some accounts they had an army of Folk behind them, armed with sharp spears and strange magic, with storm and madness and evil eye, with dreadful old-world savagery, with a sound of terrible drumming. Some accounts say that it was their dreadful weapon that destroyed the Senate, or the Floating World. "Jasper will not fall to the Line," John Creedmoor said as he stood on the Senate's steps and wound the handle of his secret weapon, "it'll burn first," as the lightning struck on all sides of him and the Senate's roof cracked open like an egg, "This is the end of the world."

Well, none of that is true. I don't know where they were but they were not in Jasper City. There was enough destruction without them and n.o.body needed their help.

A troupe of Swing Street actors in Folk masks of white wood and horse-hair manes were mistaken for the real thing and that started a panic that ended in arrests and the closure of Swing Street by order of the Archway Engine itself- the Street was cordoned off at all entrances by barbed wire. By that time the Linesmen had taken just about the whole city and they were cordoning off streets as they pleased, and defoliating the parks.

The fighting did not last long. The whole Battle of Jasper lasted less than two weeks. That was thanks to the excellence of the Engines' planning, Mr. Lime a.s.sured me, but in a small way it was thanks to me. By stepping into Old Man Baxter's shoes and lending my name to the cause of order, he said, I had helped to smooth over what might have been a significantly more troublesome transition.

If I had done things differently then who knows, maybe Jasper would have fought back and won its freedom. Mr. Lime did not think so but maybe he was wrong. Maybe Jasper would have fallen anyhow, only more people would have died. I believe that I did what seemed best at the time, under difficult circ.u.mstances.

Gentleman Jim Dark fled the city like a rat from a burning building as soon as things went south for him. He rode out on the road west at evening, with a Vessel in pursuit and the last few gold bars from the sack of the Jasper City Bank in his saddlebags, and he spent the next six months drifting from town to town on the Rim, boasting of how he may not have won the Battle of Jasper City but d.a.m.n it he'd let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds know they were in a fight.

Scarlet Jen was made of sterner stuff. I guess the way she saw things Jasper City was hers and had always been hers and she would not leave it, she would rather die when it did. I admire that.

In the Linesmen's files I read all about how she'd been in the Floating World for sixty years, seventy, or more, collecting secrets and scheming and blackmailing and what ever else Agents of the Gun do. The demon that rode her gave her long life and it made her beautiful. Don't think it didn't make her dangerous too. She cut her hair short and she wore trousers she'd taken from a dead employee of the Baxter Detective Agency and for ten days, even while the Linesmen's trucks roared into the city along every road carrying men and machines, she roamed free. Unlike Gentleman Jim Dark she had no mob and she didn't give speeches or pose for photographs or talk to the newspapers. Nor did she make demands or offer justifications or claim that right was on her side. She just killed.

Mr. Lime had a map made on the wall of the Big Office showing the place where she'd shot an officer from the rooftops, and another place where she'd murdered a whole checkpoint, and the place where she'd somehow cracked an Ironclad's sh.e.l.l and the place where a lucky Private Second Cla.s.s had shot her in the leg and she'd limped away bleeding, cursing out loud for her demon to heal her. It didn't take a genius to see a kind of spiral drawn on that map, starting out across the river but coming in over the bridge to Fenimore, and around and around the outskirts of that occupied island, constantly probing and testing the defenses arrayed around the spiral's central point, which of course was Baxter's Tower.

Mr. Lime folded his arms behind his back, studied his map, nodded. "She's coming for you, Mr. Ransom, sir."

"I guess she is, Mr. Lime. I'm flattered."

"Well, too late, isn't it? They've lost. You're with us now." I waited in the Big Office for days and I watched them make marks on the map as incidents were reported in- always closer and closer- an inch here, an inch there. I'll confess that I was rooting for her to make it all the way.

She didn't.

"Good work, everyone," Mr. Lime said. With his thumb he pushed one last pin into the map, then stood back and examined it with satisfaction. "Good work."

My sister Jess survived the burning of the Floating World too, though I did not learn that for many months- not until long after Jasper City had fallen. The barricades had gone up and gone down again. The rest of the world called it the Battle of Jasper but in the language of the new administration it was the Recent Emergency, and what ever you called it it was over. I was so well settled into my new employment that I no longer started when an Officer of the Line called me sir, and whole days went by when I thought neither of escape nor suicide. Every morning I sat at the old man's desk- my desk- and I answered my correspondence- some days I no longer needed the Officers of the Line standing at my shoulder to tell me what to write.

I guess it must have been a mistake that the report regarding miss jessica hite, nee ransom, was sent across my desk. The Line makes more mistakes than you'd think. Maybe it was a friendly power, still looking out for me in spite of everything. Anyhow the report said that Miss. .h.i.te had been seen down in a place in the Deltas that I won't name, under an alias that I won't write, and asked "whether action should be taken to retrieve her." I tore the d.a.m.n thing up and ate it. That small act of rebellion gave me the strength to go on for another six months. I was still a prisoner but knowing that she was alive gave me the strength to start thinking again.

Neither the author of the report nor I had any notion how she'd escaped the burning of the Floating World, not to mention the military cordon around Jasper City. Maybe the world is not always as hard a place as it pretends. I never tried to track her down. That was the best thing I could do for her.

THE FOURTH PART.

RANSOM CITY.

CHAPTER 28.

THE BEGINNING OF THE FOURTH PART.

To my way of thinking the Battle of Jasper City ended on the day when Scarlet Jen died at a checkpoint on Zelda Street. As I write this that was four years ago almost to the day. It is not an occasion anybody ever celebrates or mourns, not even back in the Territory, maybe because since then so many places have fallen to one side or the other and then fallen back. Ever since we brought our secret weapons and our rumors of weapons and the Bomb into the world there has been a whole lot of History, more than anyone can remember. More than I could write down even if I had forever, and I do not.

n.o.body in this country would remember the date anyhow- out here Jasper City is just a rumor of something ancient and magnificent back east, like how people in Jasper City thought about the old countries back over the mountains. They hardly even know who I am. I guess our visit to these parts must be the strangest thing they've ever seen.

We are far out on the Rim, not far from a little town I won't name and by the edge of a big west-flowing river I won't name either. It is not the same river I mentioned in Chapter Twelve. We are striking the boats.

The Beck brothers turned out to be first-rate boatsmen. They had told me they were boatsmen when they joined up but I had thought it was only bravado, because in addition to boat-handling they are fist-fighters and crack shots and they know what do with horses and sheep and rope and how to read direction from trees and stars and how to tell if there is gold in a river and Josh Beck even says with a wink that he knows a bit of Folk magic. Ransom City is lucky to have them.

By the by the boats were bought for us by Mr. Lung, who after Amaryllis died left the city and struck out north-west and to make a long story short he ended up making his fortune in Melville City, which has now put itself on the map as the Cleanest City on the Western Rim. He was in a coffee house in Melville City a couple of months back when one of his acquaintances among Melville's business elite handed him one of my letters. It was the letter that began: to whom it may concern to whoever picks this up to all free-thinking men and women of peace and goodwill i invite you to join me in the city of the future.

And et cetera.

He sold up fast and headed south- by motor-car at first- and he caught our trail near the county of Nabilac. His wife is a beautiful and spirited young woman from Melville City who was active in the Six Thousand Club there and who is eager to build our city too, though our goals will be more modest at first. Along the way they met up with Mr. Angel Langhorne, who had not prospered so well- as a matter of fact he spent most of the years since the Battle of Jasper in prison on the Rim for fraud, and some of them in an insane asylum, and when he met up with Mr. Lung he possessed only one shoe. He still shakes and stutters and cannot look you in the eye and smells of sweat and burned hair, but none of us are perfect. His rain-making device does not quite work yet but he a.s.sures me that it is showing promise as we get further out west, where the skies are bigger and the clouds are wilder and stronger kinds of animal. I believe him. We need not fear for lack of water in Ransom City!

For a while I hoped one of my sisters might see the letters and come find me, but they have not. I guess I don't blame them.

We are camped out on the edge of the river, on the edge of the world. A little way past this point the river becomes un-navigable, even for the Beck brothers. There are a few more settlements alongside the river, with deep woods all around them- then nothing that has any name in our language. In the very far distance on a very clear morning you can see mountains. Ask the locals what they're called and they'll shrug. They reckon Folk live there, and they have all kinds of superst.i.tions regarding them.

We got the Apparatus off the boat without incident except that Josh Beck slipped and soaked himself, and Mr. Langhorne laughed until he had one of his fits. The Apparatus hums constantly these days, like it is happy to be going home.

This is the last place from which we might send back mail, and even here for mail to get to any place that counts in the world it will have to pa.s.s through many hands- a ridiculous succession of improbabilities- like one of the complex contraptions Adela and I used to build back on Swing Street. I reckon the odds are better than even that this last part of the story will get lost, sunk in the river or eaten by wolves or stuck through with spears or tossed aside as worthless by bandits or left to bleach in the hot desert somewhere, going white like the unknown places on a map.

Miss Fleming caught sight of the smoke-trail of a scouting Vessel in the distance. I couldn't see it myself but others with sharper eyes and a more finely honed sense of danger saw it clear enough. It turned backeast. They have spygla.s.ses, so if we saw it it saw us.

We are far out beyond any lands controlled by the Line. But who knows these days. Everything is falling apart and it may be that some splinter of the Line's forces operates in this area, or they may be deserters or rebels. Who knows. They are not likely to be friendly. Whoever they are I guess I must get through my story pretty quick if I want to be sure of telling it all before they find us.

CHAPTER 29.

MY TIME AT THE TOP.

The Baxter Trust became the Baxter-Ransom Trust.

The transformation of the Baxter Trust into the Baxter-Ransom Trust was an operation on a military scale, surpa.s.sing even the invasion of Jasper for manpower and planning. It happened maybe three or four months after the fall of Jasper City to the Line. I had no say in the matter. I am told it was a policy decided at the highest levels, which is to say by the Engines themselves, who find it useful sometimes to operate through a human face.

The Trust's activities extended all over the western world, and it was essential that the transformation took place without disruption in the lines of power, and so an army of lawyers and accountants had to go out from Jasper City all across the Territory and out to the remotest mining towns on the Rim and the plantations of the Deltas and up into the cold north to handle paperwork. They even went into East Conlan. Soldiers of the Line went with them to suppress rebellious subsidiaries. I had no part in the planning of any of this except to sign my name to doc.u.ments. Mostly what I remember of my first few months as President of the Baxter-Ransom Trust was signing doc.u.ments. Once matters of money and power were taken care of I was presented for a public signing ceremony in Tanager Square. What was left of Jasper City's great men sat in chairs before me and the crowd gathered behind a chain fence and I spoke through electrical amplification, promising a new start under new management and a square deal for the hard-working man of Jasper, who had the good sense to knuckle under and do his job without complaint. Sometimes Mr. Lime sat behind me while I spoke but he did not often need to threaten me. Most days I was so settled into my routine that I could make those speeches and make them well without feeling a thing.

The roads reopened. Jasper resumed trade, notably with Gibson City, which remained under control of the Line. There was a period of truce. Life in Jasper returned to something not so very different from what it had been before, except that production s.h.i.+fted to a war footing.

When I was a boy I used to dream about being a rich man, a man of power and the freedom to do as he pleases- what boy doesn't? I tried to imagine what a man like Mr. Baxter did all day. I confess I sometimes got him mixed up with a king from a story-book about the old country, and imagined jousts and harems of a hundred beautiful women.

I slept in a four-poster bed that had previously belonged to Mr. Baxter, in the pent house apartment that had previously been his. I was woken at six every morning, whether I liked it or not, by one of the succession of adjutants who served me or commanded me, however you chose to look at it. The adjutant's servant carried a silver tray which in turn carried coffee, a boiled egg, a heap of correspondence and legal doc.u.ments, a copy of the Jasper City Evening Post from which most news about the War had been censored, and an arrangement of chemical tablets, the finest products of the Line's science, which I was a.s.sured would calm my moods and sharpen my thinking and regulate my bowels and prevent cancer. Anyhow I was not permitted not to take them. The newspaper was a courtesy and they did not care if I read it or not. There was little in it after the censoring except sport.

From six until six fifteen I was left alone in the bathroom, where I did my best to perform the Ransom System of Exercises. Mr. Baxter's bathroom was more s.p.a.cious than most people's houses and so the Exercises suffered little compromise, I am happy to report. There were gold fittings and big-breasted women made of white marble and mirrors big enough for the vanity of a King. A row of ivory boxes and greasy-looking jars on a shelf along the back wall held relics of Old Man Baxter, such as his false teeth and his spectacles and his wigs and breathing-tubes and syringes and his mechanical hearing-trumpet and his artificial foot. Sometimes I used to look at those and think of the failing sight in my bad eye and the various aches and pains I had acc.u.mulated out on the Rim and I contemplated the years ahead of me with dread.

At six fifteen if I had not emerged the adjutant opened the door regardless.

I signed legal doc.u.ments for a period of time that varied from two minutes to half an hour, depending on whether I bothered to ask questions as to their meaning or raise any kind of futile protest against any injustice I saw in them. Sometimes I did- truth is, not often.

Then until half-past nine I sat at the old man's writing-desk and answered correspondence. The desk was heavy and made of a very fine wood that was so black it looked burned and in the middle of it sat the big triplicate typewriter, which so far as I know is the only one of its kind in the world. Most of the correspondence was about business, letters from Mayors or Senators or the executives of subsidiary operations of the Baxter-Ransom Trust, like the Northern Lighting Corporation or the Conlan Coal Company. If it was important the adjutants told me what to write.

In my first month at the top I got at least a hundred letters from creditors from back in East Conlan or all over the Western Rim who reckoned I owed them money, and I guess I most likely did. All plausible claims were paid promptly and with interest. A few ambitious fellows attempted to bring lawsuits against me personally or the Baxter-Ransom Trust but they got a quick visit from the detectives of the BaxterRansom Agency, who taught them a thing or two about how the world works. Soon enough all my debts were cleared. I had never been debt-free since I was a knee-high child and I cannot say I altogether enjoyed the sensation- I felt like my strings had been cut.

I got letters from small boys in far-flung towns all over the West who wanted to know how come I made it from a n.o.body like them to the top of the tallest tower in Jasper City and I told them anyone who worked hard and played the game by the rules could get ahead, just like it said in Mr. Baxter's Autobiography.

On days when my correspondence was done before nine thirty I was permitted to stand by the window and stare out over Jasper City. I watched the new towers go up to fill the holes the Battle had knocked in the skyline. The cranes were taller than redwoods, and they were constructed in the Station of Harrow Cross and brought south on the backs of trucks to Jasper City and a.s.sembled by workmen in my employ and leased to the city by the Baxter-Ransom Trust for a sum so staggering I shall not write it down or you will think I am telling tall tales.

At nine thirty I dressed in a black suit and was taken down in the private elevator to the room that contained the old man's fleet of black motor-cars. I shook the hand of what ever adjutant awaited me and said, "Well, Mr. whoever-you-are, where is it today?" Usually it was some factory somewhere, where I spoke to the workers, or a meeting with Senators to discuss the defense of the city, at which I sat quietly while the adjutant spoke.

Sometimes on these journeys my routine was enlivened by an attempt at a.s.sa.s.sination. The Agents Procopio "Dynamite" Morse, Black John Boles, Pearl Starr, and Red-Headed d.i.c.k all made attempts upon my life at one time or another. Gentleman Jim Dark returned to Jasper City six months after he first fled and boasted in taverns about what he would do when he got his hands on me, but I can tell you that he never did get up the grit to attack my car. Of all the Agents who tried it was Procopio Morse who got closest to success. With well-placed dynamite beneath a manhole on Seventh Street he managed to turn the car right over like a beetle on its back, and when he tore off the door I spilled out dazed and bleeding onto the street between his boots and I lay on my back looking up at him. He was a black fellow with a broad nose and a wild mop of reddish hair and a big black bow-tie and a bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned black coat and everything about him was handsome except for his hands, which were burned and club-like. Anyhow he stood over me and made a speech, which I guess was heart-felt and proud and impa.s.sioned from the look on his face but it was wasted on me because of the way my ears were still ringing, and it gave the Linesmen in the car behind a chance to shoot him. He fell on top of me. I recall saying "Thank you, well done, good work" to the officers who pulled him off me and helped me to stand.

At one I took lunch alone in the dining room of the old man's penthouse apartment. Paintings all around the room bore the likenesses of thirty-eight Engines, which all looked alike to me. I ate lightly. Mr. Baxter was an old man and had had little taste for rich food- the bill of fare was fixed and invariable. At least I did not ask them to vary it- who knows if they would have. Dinner was at seven under the same circ.u.mstances. Like me, Mr. Baxter was a Vegetarian. From two until seven I worked in a laboratory of the Northern Lighting Corporation, which had been given to me for the development and refinement of the Process. After dinner I continued my researches and correspondence at the old man's writing-desk, sitting beneath a circle of cold electric light, typing away on this very machine right here. The Line's finest chemical science ensured that I slept by midnight every night, and did not dream.

The first time I refused to cooperate with Mr. Lime's instructions was, as I recall, when I was asked to sign a doc.u.ment authorizing the seizure and depopulation of certain territories on the South-Western Rim- well, I will say no more, for I have enough enemies. It was shortly after I had learned of my sister's survival, and I was starting to think for myself again.

"No," I said.

"No?"

"No, Lime. Take it away."

He waited very patiently for me to change my mind. You have never seen a more patient man in all your life. His face was as blank as a clock, ticking its way toward midnight. I flatter myself that my face was firm as well. When he saw that I would not easily relent he simply gathered up the papers and left me alone in the pent house. He locked the door behind him and had the lights turned off. At first I thought I had won. It took me a while to realize that he had ordered no food or water to be brought to me until I changed my mind. I am telling the truth when I say that I held out for a long time before giving in- as a matter of fact I was so weak from hunger and thirst that I could hardly pull the bell-rope to summon him back. They did not come when I summoned, but waited until I was near-dead before opening the door, letting in a great blast of electric-light that at first I thought was the light of the next world, and they hoisted me on the shoulders of two heavyset officers and swept me down to the infirmary in the Tower's bas.e.m.e.nt. While I lay on a bed down there I seemed to hear many voices talking to me, and I dare say all of them were really just nurses or doctors or Officers of the Line, but it seemed to me that I heard the voice of Liv Alverhuysen, counseling silence, cunning, and subterfuge, and I heard the voice of my old friend Mr. Carver counseling patience.

When Mr. Lime presented the doc.u.ment to me again, I signed it. I do not mean to say that I rebelled that way often. I did not. Sometimes I pretended to be sick, retreating to my bed like a child- I am not very proud of that, but you play the hand you are dealt. When the discomfort of my situation became too great there were chemicals that the Line's doctors could provide, ones that would help to calm you or to take away anxiety or to narrow and sharpen your thinking. Sometimes I asked for them. For the most part I did not need them. The truth is that for the most part I cooperated, telling myself I was biding my time, waiting for my moment to escape or to turn the tables on the Line. I kept thinking that I could do some good with Baxter's money. I kept thinking that for longer than you might credit, but it is the truth. I used Mr. Baxter's money to establish the Baxter-Ransom Scholars.h.i.+p for Poor Boys and Girls, and although it only lasted for two years before everything fell apart it was not a bad thing to have done. I am not a fool and I do not imagine that it counts for much set against everything else.

Often, and more and more as the months went by, I forgot to resist, even in my own mind. I forgot that I was playing a part. I found myself taking plea sure in the triumphs of the Baxter-Ransom Trust, the way Mr. Baxter must have.

My work in the laboratory kept me sane, or just about sane enough. I could forget about politics and I could forget about right and wrong. I could think about nothing except the work itself.

A whole bas.e.m.e.nt floor beneath the Baxter-Ransom Tower was cleared out for the reconstruction of the Apparatus, and a couple dozen Line engineers were a.s.signed to a.s.sist me. Some of them were from Harrow Cross, and others were formerly employed by the Northern Lighting Corporation. They could have given me a thousand Line engineers and they would not have been the equal of one half of Mr. Carver or Adela Kotan Iermo and I was not shy about telling them so. Nevertheless within a few weeks all the grimy and sinister stone corridors beneath the Baxter-Ransom Tower were lit by the lights of the Process, and the elevators were powered by it too- not that Mr. Lime was impressed.

"That's not what you're here for, Ransom."

"The Process is free-energy-it'll save the Baxter-Ransom Trust a substantial sum- I know, I've seen the books."

"You're here because of the Miracle at White Rock, Mr. Ransom. You're here because you promised Bomb-making."

"Never my words. And White Rock was an accident and not easy to replicate. These things take time."

"You're here because the other side has their secret weapon, and we must have ours. You're here because of what you found. You're here because of dumb luck. Never forget that you're replaceable, Mr. Ransom, that's my advice to you if you mean to survive in this life."

"Replace me then, Lime, and see how far you get."

Not long after that Mr. Lime himself was replaced. That was right about when I stopped remembering the names of the adjutants.

I guess that was about the time when the Concord of the Barons down in the Delta declared for the Republic, and so did the Territory of Thurlow. Dr. Lysvet Alverhuysen was appointed First Speaker of the Republic, second in rank only to the President himself. The Gloriana and Dryden Engines met their end. The Northwest Territory was swept by a wave of little rebellions. There was word that the abandoned town of White Rock had been taken over by a group of the Folk, who were not afraid of the transformations that had been worked on that place, and who were letting n.o.body across the pa.s.s. I guess they do not make the same mistake twice. The adjutants tried their best to keep news of the War from me but things slipped out. The rebellions in the Northwest Territory disrupted the Baxter-Ransom Trust's operations so badly that I was forced to spend hours signing doc.u.ments. Anyhow by the time the historians sort out who did what when and how I will be long gone, one way or the other.

I guess should say a few words about Bombs.

The thing Liv and Creedmoor dug up from under the World's Wall Mountains was probably of the same kind as the thing I just plain stumbled upon in the woods outside of East Conlan. What I mean is that it was a word in the language of the world before people like me came over the mountains. I do not know how they learned how to use it. I guess the Folk must have showed them. I guess they made a deal of some kind. I wish they would have been so forthcoming with me, it would have saved a whole lot of hard work.

I never got the chance to see their weapon in operation with my own eyes and n.o.body knows better than me that the accounts you read in the newspapers are not always to be trusted, but I hear that it was more sound than light, like a great big drumming that makes everything in the world shake. I hear other accounts that say it was silent and still, that no warning sign of its operation could be detected except that suddenly Engines would fall still, Guns would fall silent. I heard other accounts that spoke of fire or a great dark cloud. Not all of those stories can be true at once and maybe none of them were.

At the Battle of Juniper it left the Gloriana and Dryden Engines as merely machines, tons of empty metal, so much junk.

There is a theory that a lot of people hold, myself included, but n.o.body much likes to write down, that the Gun and the Line are likewise powers of the world before. Some people will say that we drove them mad when we came here and put our names on them and gave them the shapes they wear now. There is a somewhat heretical sect of the Smiler Brotherhood who hold that Gun and Line are therefore a kind of self-punishment for our sins, and that all we need to do is forgive ourselves to be rid of them. I guess that hasn't worked so well so far but the Smilers are always hopeful, in fact that is their best quality.

What the Folk entrusted to Liv and Creedmoor must have been something like a cure, or a stick to tame wild beasts. I wondered why they had waited so long to share it and I guess they had no real reason to stir themselves quickly on our behalf. Or maybe they thought we might only make more trouble with it. If half of what you hear about the fighting that followed the Battle of Jasper is true then maybe they were right.

What I found was something a little different, and more. A more fundamental process- something that struck at the roots of the world. I had to learn how to make it work for myself, and what could be done with it.

By all accounts, the weapon Liv and Creedmoor found kills the demons of the Gun and the Engines of the Line, but leaves everything else as it is. That is not true of the Process. If you have ever read a newspaper in recent years you know what happens when the Process is fully let off its leash.

If I had to guess I would say that the Folk who permitted me to see it never thought I would make anything of it. They did not think I would understand. I would guess it was a kind of joke for them.

Another possibility is that they wanted to see this whole world we have carved out of what was here before blown away, and therefore entrusted this power to fall into the hands of an irresponsible boy. That they saw some madness in me, something unstable, that would take their old science and add something new to it and make something terrible. I guess they have their factions and their disagreements and their politics just like anyone else, and if the Folk I met outside Conlan all those years ago had a plan it is not necessarily the same as the plans of those Liv and Creedmoor met out west. I don't like that theory so much because it is less flattering to me Or it was just an accident. Anyhow I played the hand that was dealt me as well as I could and I worked hard and I guess in a way I made something of myself, just like I always said I would.

I did my best. I had no choice but to work, but I gave the Linesmen as little as I could. I never wrote down enough of the Process for them to reconstruct it without me, and I introduced errors and impurities wherever I could. I spotted the sharpest minds among my engineers and filed complaints regarding their incompetence, causing seven of them to be relocated to the front before the adjutants got wise to what I was doing. They needed my mind intact or they would have drugged me or tortured me, I have no doubt.