The Rise Of Ransom City Part 27

The adjutant shrugged. "Who knows? Not easily. In my opinion they're over-confident. They think the Engines are broken and maybe they are but they still have damage left to do."

"We are under siege, then."

"By order of the Kingstown Engine itself I'm here to escort you and the Apparatus to the front, where you are to begin the Process. Like the Log-Town test again, sir- they don't care who dies on either side. Not anymore- not if they ever did. They want you there personally."

She held out her hand to me and helped me to my feet. I was so tired after my work that I could hardly stand. I was locked in a crouch, like a rusted machine or a comic actor. My legs shook.

"I don't intend to do that, sir. The contact from the Republic got word to me this morning- we must meet them under Arch Six, by noon, no later."

"Will Adela be there?"

"Yes," she said. "So they say. She knows the contact- I don't."

"Then we should hurry," I said. "One thing before we go."

Have I described the inside of the laboratory before? I think I have not- an oversight. I apologize. It was one very big room with walls made of gray metal and a flat gray roof from which hung lamps powered by the Process- sometimes trapped pigeons died on them like moths. From one end of the laboratory you could hardly see the other- it could be hot at one end and cold at the other. I would not have been altogether surprised if one day it started to storm overhead. I have been in towns that were smaller than the laboratory and considered themselves to be booming little towns on the go. A room like that was h.e.l.l for echoes at the best of times and you can imagine that under the conditions of heavy experimentation with the Process, I mean the phantoms and the effects on gravity and time and distance, it was a strange and confusing place to work. Rows of desks and workbenches were laid out grid-fas.h.i.+on to the farthest wall. Between them was a chaos of machinery. The letters nlc were etched over and over into the metal whether I liked it or not. There were experimental forms of the Apparatus everywhere. Many of those departed wildly from my design- I did not understand some of them at all. Some of them were big as houses with magnetic cylinders like a miller's wheels and they disturbed the bowels of every person who went near them. Sometimes a team of engineers would venture inside and I cannot say for sure that they always emerged. Some were even taller than that, and constructed like grandfather-clocks, with a great iron weight that would drop with a terrible whoos.h.i.+ng noise. There were empty zones cleared by past frightening incidents where maybe only an overturned bench or a single hammer lay on the floor. There were half-constructed or half-dismantled designs lying on their sides with their ribs sticking out. There were machines that were made to monitor the efficiency of the other machines and I'll confess again- I did not understand them. The enterprise had long since surpa.s.sed the understanding of any one person's mind. I do not think the Engines understood it either.

I guess I understood it well enough to break things.

For most of that last sleepless week I had been working on the various half-made Apparatuses that stood around the laboratory like crumbling ruins. I had rebuilt three of the largest models, readying them to run wild. The Line wanted weapons. I had made weapons. They were not weapons that could be controlled, but they did not need to be.

"Here we go," I told the adjutant.

I threw levers, turned wheels. There were signs on the three Apparatuses warning of danger if certain parameters were exceeded. I exceeded them.

"What will happen?" asked the adjutant.

"Nothing good," I said.

"Why?"

"I won't leave them behind for just anyone- besides this may give the Republic's men a fighting chance. I believe in fair play."

"How long?"

"Half an hour? Maybe less. Maybe more. Sometimes it builds slowly and sometimes it comes on at a rush. To be honest I thought it might happen at once."

She was a good soldier, and said nothing, only stiffened slightly. I respected her.

"Well," I said. "I guess we'll see."

There was a protocol in event of emergencies that called for the laboratory and all of the many-storied building beneath it to be evacuated. It required both my key and the adjutant's. We activated it, causing alarms to sound and telegrams to be rattled off from the machines of offices everywhere-clear the building in an urgent but orderly fas.h.i.+on. . . .

The three Apparatuses were magnificent beasts, even if I did not fully understand them. I remarked to the adjutant that it felt like I was setting them free.

"Sir-we have to go."

We left the laboratory and went down from the roof. Alarms blared. A panicked mob blocked the elevators, including my private elevator, which they would never be able to use. I confessed to the adjutant that I had not thought of that before starting the alarms- I blamed sleeplessness. We were forced to go down from the rooftop by one of the endlessly spiraling echoing staircases. We stumbled in the gloom. Crowds pushed past us. Already the Process as it built up in the laboratory was creating its phantoms- summoning them to it- and as we ran downstairs there were phantom people doggedly heads-down climbing the stairs as if the event upstairs was an appointment they had to keep, like it or not. There was that usual moment of electric uncertainty every time you b.u.mped into one. Like always they were in a variety of styles of dress and like always they were silent. It was no use saying excuse me to them or are you mad because they were not really there.

We stumbled down the staircase. The adjutant and I carried the suitcase with the miniaturized Apparatus between us. The suitcase also contained a number of Adela's letters, and it contained a great deal of money and a fortune in letters of credit and stock in what was left of the Baxter-Ransom Trust. I had to leave Mr. Baxter's typewriter behind. I was somewhat sorry to leave the thing after all the time I had spent with it but when I suggested that together we might carry it out, the adjutant told me as respectfully as she could not to be a fool.

We quickly went further down than I had ever been- I had not touched ground level for months. There were noises and stinks of machinery. Below us somewhere in the subterranean levels the Kingstown Engine cowered in its lair. I wondered what it made of the alarms.

I followed the adjutant outside through a big open doorway through which hundreds of people were streaming- it led out onto a concrete plaza under a concrete sky. Everyone was running everywhere and shouting. By no means everyone running out there on that plaza was really a real person. There was a light up above on the roof of the building that was hard to look at but also hard to look away from.

It was just as we got outside and while I was still staring up at that light that a group of men in black coats stopped us. I only recognized them as engineers from the Ransom Project after blinking and thinking for a moment and after they called me sir in a menacing way.

"Evacuate," the adjutant told them.

"What's happening- where are you going?"

"I said, evacuate- didn't you hear the alarms?"

Well, they weren't fools and they quickly guessed that we were up to no good. Two of them tried to seize the suitcase and the adjutant had to shoot one of them in the leg. I wrestled the suitcase from the other and swinging it I knocked him on the head. I do not know where I found the strength to swing it like that.

The adjutant waved her gun and the other engineers scrambled away. Addressing the crowd, she explained, "Traitors." n.o.body seemed to care-I am not sure who was on whose side anyhow. Harrow Cross was in chaos. The streets were full of phantoms. Tall Folk in robes strode brazenly down the Station's avenues. I saw the citizens of Harrow Cross running, crouching in dark corners, screaming, laughing, looting, kissing each other right in the street- I saw people shooting the phantoms conjured by the Process, to no avail- I saw people taking the phantoms in their arms and kissing them- I cannot tell you how strange that was to see. The living and the dead, the real and the unreal, all running here and there in the maddened avenues- I remarked to the adjutant that maybe that was what the Process was for after all. All together as one, I said.

The adjutant waved her gun. Above us, one by one, the windows began to break, all the way down the building. Below us there was a sound like a great beast roaring, and the concrete shuddered beneath our feet.

Light leapt from the earth to the sky and back again. A hole opened up in the world. I do not mean that metaphorically. That is what the Process did- what it does- I did not fully understand that until I saw it open in the middle of Harrow Cross. It strips away the world and reveals the energy that lies beneath. That is why it seems to make more energy than you put in, and that is why it has strange effects on gravity and other forces, and that is why its light casts ghostly shadows of men and women from other worlds, and finally that is why it is so very dangerous.

An area about the size of White Rock right in the middle of Harrow Cross vanished into bright light, like the world was a map and somebody was holding a candle behind it until the light burned through.

I do not know how many people died, and I do not care to offer an estimate. No more than would have died in the siege anyhow, I think, or I hope.

"Died" is not precisely the right word, but it is good enough. It would be more accurate to say that they ceased to exist. Small comfort to anyone, I know.

The Kingstown Engine was reported lost after the battle. Opinions differ on who can take credit for its destruction- I believe it was me. The radius of the devastation was so great that it could have reached even the subterranean levels where the Kingstown Engine hid. I believe that I thereby shortened the siege by days at least, probably weeks- and who knows, maybe without me the Station would have not have fallen to the siege at all. Then who knows where we would be.

"When I was a boy," I said to the adjutant, as we turned our faces away from the light and crouched behind a motor-car, "I read the Autobiography of Mr. Baxter over and over. Do you know it?"

"No, sir."

"Well, he talked a lot about great men and how history was like a woman and seizing the reins of history. I guess he was thinking of horses not women but he was an old man and maybe confused. Anyhow when I was a boy, I was red-hot for being like him. I mean that I wanted to be a big man and I wanted to leave my mark on history."

"Sir," she said.

"I guess I've done it now. What do you think?"

"How long will it- it keeps growing, sir. Will it-?"

"Stop?"

It was hard to estimate the rate at which the light was expanding- it was hard to look at it. But it seemed to be expanding slowly but steadily, at perhaps the speed of a man walking, a tourist taking in the sights of the Station.

The truth is that I was not sure when the light would stop expanding. It had already exceeded my wildest predictions. I was not sure it would ever stop.

The car's windows burst, showering black gla.s.s on my shoulders.

"We'll be okay," I lied. "So long as we keep moving."

"Sir."

"What?"

"We should keep moving, sir. Now."

"Yes, yes, of course. Yes."

The adjutant and I ran through the avenues and corridors of the Station. She went first. We ran toward the appointed meeting-place. Arch Six, at noon.

Arch Six was one of the Station's seven big entryways, big enough to encompa.s.s the biggest of the Engines. It was made of gray-black stone. It curved high up in the air over the tracks of the Line- tracks that ran east out of the city and once had run all the way out to Fountainhead and Gloriana and nearly all the way to the World's Walls. The forces of the Republic had cut that line. On the arch above there were fortifications and barracks- in the shadows beneath it there were ware houses and machines and people running to and fro. Along the tracks an army of phantoms came marching in old-time clothes from the first settlement of the West and sometimes in chains, their faces turned up toward the light in the middle of the Station.

The adjutant pushed through the crowds holding one end of the suitcase and I followed behind her holding the other.

Someone touched my arm. I turned to see a woman in a black coat.

It was Adela. At first I didn't recognize her.

I didn't care about the scars- I had said that in my letters and it turned out to be true. I dropped my end of the suitcase and the adjutant cried out in surprise and aggravation.

Adela said my name- nothing else- we embraced for longer than the adjutant thought wise.

"You-," Adela said, and I said, "I- we-"

The adjutant interrupted us, demanding to know where the contact was, where we were going, what the plan was to get us out of the Station and into the safe and welcoming arms of the Republic's forces.

"This way," Adela said. "Hurry."

There was no time to say anything else.

I hefted my end of the suitcase. Adela led the way, the adjutant ran, I followed. We ran together down a narrow alley between two windowless buildings beneath Arch Six and into a small dark room where a man awaited us. He smiled to see us as we entered the room- he took off his hat and stretched out his arms in welcome.

"This man is working with the Republic," Adela said. "He-"

"No," I said. "I know this man. He once tried to shoot me. This is Gentleman Jim Dark, Agent of the Gun."

Mr. Dark had shaved his famous mustaches, perhaps by way of disguise, but I recognized his face anyhow. He did not deny my accusation, but smiled again, kind of like I had asked him for an autograph. Adela made a noise of shock and outrage.

"Sorry, ladies," Mr. Dark said.

"The Republic," I said, "doesn't know we're here. Does it? It never did. I dare say it doesn't even want us."

Gentleman Jim Dark nodded, as if acknowledging that I'd made a fair point in debate.

"I told you one day we'd have a fair fight, Mr. Ransom. Well that day is here."

The adjutant was well-disciplined. She did not waste her time crying out in shock or complaining about how she had been betrayed. She drew her gun and lifted it toward Mr. Dark without delay. She was not nearly fast enough- he shot her dead.

Then he smiled and shot Adela too.

I guess he shot her because now he had me and the suitcase he no longer needed her. I did not ask him why he did it.

I shall not describe how it looked as she fell, or how she lay there afterwards. I shall not say how I felt. I do not have the time or the words. It would cause me pain, and do you no good, and do her no honor.

Mr. Dark, having holstered his gun, was talking. I shall not record the whole long speech he gave me. Why should I? It was all gloating and posturing about his cleverness and how all the world might fall apart but the Gun would remain strong, or at least he would remain strong, to h.e.l.l with the Gun, and how he was now the richest and most powerful man in the world so long as he held that suitcase in his hand.

"There are so few of us left, Professor- so few. These last few years have been bad. Soon there'll be none of us at all outside of story-books and history-books. Well, I won't have that- not me. I won't go gently. I don't know that I like this new century coming so much but I mean to have a place in it anyhow. Let's see. Let's have a look-see."

He kept his gun holstered and he turned his back to me while he examined the contents of the suitcase. Perhaps he was hoping I would attack him, so that he could have the satisfaction of shooting me as I fought back. More likely he simply did not care what I did.

I did not attack him. I stood where I was, and watched him roughly handle the Apparatus's delicate parts.

"Is that it?"

"Yes," I said. "It is."

"Doesn't look like much. What do you think?"

He did not appear to be talking to me, but to himself.

"It is terrible," I said.

He turned to me and raised an eyebrow.

"It is much more terrible than your bosses. Or the Line. Soon n.o.body will care about you at all. Then where will you be?"

He smiled at me. "Well now, Professor- I reckon we'll adapt. Resourceful, that's something I've often been called."

I did not want to argue with him. I had not meant to speak out loud at all.

When he saw I would give him no more entertainment, he turned back to the Apparatus. He touched a finger to one of the magnetic cylinders, and spun it.

"Is that it? Well, I guess I'm not the scientific type. Nor are the bosses. So long as it works."

He dug beneath the Apparatus, and pulled out the letters from Adela.

"What are these?"

I told him. He did not trust me at first, but scanned a few and found them boring. He glanced over at the place beside me where Adela lay, and a theatrical expression of sorrow appeared on his face, making me wish I could somehow kill him.

He shook his head. "Too bad. Too bad. You know, Professor Ransom, I'm not a cruel man- whatever you may have read in the newspapers. I'm a sporting man- ask anyone. I know what love is. Here, take them."

I hesitated, and he shrugged and scattered them on the floor.

Beneath the letters, he found the money I had packed for my escape.

"Ah, now," he said. "That's something else. Professor, I'm no thief. Ask anyone- I'm a decent fellow. But I have a great many widows and orphans to support. I can't in good conscience let this go. But nor can I- well, now, here's a sporting notion- what say we share it? Partners?"