The Rise Of Ransom City Part 9

It was at that moment that I perceived that what had to be done, had to be done by me. It was maybe not unlike the sensation Mr. Alfred Baxter describes in his Autobiography as seizing the moment or perceiving the Spirit of the Age, like the time he bet his whole fortune on Steel, or the time when he determined it was necessary to buy out and destroy the First Bank of Jasper City. It was not unlike the moment when as a boy I first glimpsed the mathematics behind the Process, and woke and hunted for pencil and paper. I am not a violent man or a political man and I never wanted any part in the Great War, but I saw that events had left me with no choice. I knew what plan Mr. Carver and Miss Harper had hatched that afternoon, and I saw that there was no alternative. In fact I was so overcome with selflessness that I forgave them then and there for planning behind my back.

None of this took more than a moment. I ran out from the trees and toward the Apparatus. Knoll turned and fired at me but missed, and since the Agents of the Gun never miss I think it must be that the light of the Apparatus pulsed at that moment and distracted him. I picked up the ax from where it lay at poor Mr. Carver's side and I put it into the heart of the Apparatus, smas.h.i.+ng through the gla.s.s dome and chopping through the magnets' axle and into the coiled wires beneath. Then I threw myself off the rock and into the water and began swimming away as quickly as I could. Fortunately I am a quick learner. I found that it was mostly a matter of kicking wildly and hoping for the best. I heard the bright sound of the all the gla.s.s bulbs hung in the trees shattering. I did not see but I did feel the unleashed energies of the Apparatus expand into the air, surge and recoil and snap and twist around themselves, as the Process which was barely predictable at the best of times went wild and grew and grew and became something utterly new.

The giant Knoll grunted once then went silent. There was a huge weight and pressure at my back like the sky itself had turned to stone and fallen right on me. It forced me down suddenly so that I swallowed water. The lake was cold at first and then suddenly it was warm.

Afterwards there was nothing left of Knoll or of Mr. Carver, not even dust.. Parts of the Apparatus could be found embedded in trees for hundreds of yards around, or lying on the streets of White Rock. The trees themselves in the immediate vicinity were gone. At the perimeter of the devastation the trees still stood were stripped bare of bark and leaves down to their green-white bone. The banner that read the harry ransom white rock illuminations floated out into the middle of the lake until I could no longer make it out. I asked Miss Harper if she had seen what it looked like when the Process went wild and she said that she had caught a glimpse before she turned away to hide behind a tree, but she could not describe it.

CHAPTER 10.

THE END OF THE FIRST PART.

I said that I would write about the three times I changed history. You might say that was the first- I mean the time when I saved the lives of John Creedmoor and the woman who I still cannot think of as anything other than Miss Elizabeth Harper. Or you might say it was what happened next.

We walked up to the town together. She was supporting me rather more than I was supporting her. I was crying and also laughing and I kept saying, "Think nothing of it." She said that she was sorry about Mr. Carver and I said, "There's a lot you don't know, Miss Harper."

The wolves by the way fled in confusion and panic as soon as Knoll died.

Snow had started to fall again and the fires had gone out. I do not know exactly what hour of the night it was.

Miss Harper was sun-burned on the left side of her face, and her hair on that side was somewhat charred. I think that her eyes were less blue and more violet than they had been before the Apparatus exploded. I said nothing to her about either of these things.

The street was blocked by the rubble of the Grand Hotel. The big red grand sign stuck up from the heap of bricks and timbers and beneath it were the remains of the wagon and of Mariette, the horse. I said my farewells as we circled the rubble.

We found John Creedmoor at the Bank, lying on the floor in his own blood and a mess of scattered notes and deeds and t.i.tles and scattered letters. I saw my own undelivered letter to my sister Jess under his boot. We prized loose his swollen hand from the floor and Miss Harper helped him to his feet. He was b.l.o.o.d.y and shaking and he could not stand without help.

The two of them had one of their whispered conversations, of which I heard only parts. Creedmoor did not answer any of my questions.

I should confess that most of what I have written here about his conversations with Knoll was guesswork.

The remaining townsfolk gathered around us. They took down the Nun from the fence and were able to save her. The Nun was too weak to do anything but babble and then sleep, and so, with the Mayor dead, the townsfolk had no clear leader. They might have fled like the wolves if they had anywhere to go. It broke my heart to see them, but I was also very much aware that the wagon was gone, and the horses were gone, and the Apparatus was gone, and it was winter and I was ruined.

I looked at the people of White Rock and I felt a surge of hope inside me. It caused me to open my mouth.

"People of White Rock," I said. "You should know the truth."

"Harry," Miss Harper said, and John Creedmoor said, "Shut him up." I smiled at them both and made a gesture with my hand, by which I meant, Don't worry, I have a plan, you will thank me later.

"People of White Rock," I said, "listen."

John Creedmoor looked for his gun, but finding himself unarmed was unable to stop me.

The truth is I do not remember exactly what I said, but I do remember what the newspapers said that I said, afterwards. It was something like this.

The Juniper City Morning Herald, -- 1891 STRANGE NEWS FROM THE OPALS- THE "MIRACLE" AT WHITE ROCK There is strange news from the Opals, where last winter the little town of White Rock, home to the White Rock Lumber Company, suffered the tragic loss of Mayor R. Binion, Mr. and Mrs. William F. Davy, Esq., Mr. Sam Sattel of the Bank of the Opals, and a number of other locally prominent citizens, in the course of a bank-robbery conducted by persons unknown. Witnesses to the tragedy now report that the ma.s.sacre was the work of one man, most likely an Agent of that power that we shall not name here. The perpetrator's name is unknown, though the fellow is said to have been ten feet tall and, in the words of Mr. James F. Walsh, formerly of No. 19 Main Street, "hairy all over, like he was a -- -- bear." Moreover, the perpetrator is deceased, and not at the hands of any man of White Rock. Rather, the Agent fell victim to what Miss Phelps, formerly of the Bank of the Opals, described as "some kind of -- -- awful weapon like nothin' I ever seen before." The weapon is said to be the property of a Mr. John Creedmoor- perhaps the notorious Creedmoor, whose exploits were well known to this newspaper ten years ago- and of a Miss Elizabeth Allerson, and a Professor Harry Ransom.

Mr. Tom Phelan, formerly the proprietor of the Grand Hotel, describes the incident thus: "They come to town and I thought as how they was running from somethin', but every body comes to town these days is running from somethin' what with the War an' all. I minded my own business, until that -- -- monster come into town after 'em and starts shootin' and beatin' on the Mayor and carryin' on- all confusion an' consternation- all blood an' thunder an' -- -- wolves- an' used ta keep a gun behind o' the bar but there ain't no man in White Rock can stand agin' an Agent o' the you-know-what. An' then jus' when I thought as how we was all as good as dead anyhow there was this great -- light an' the monster was gone. It was that Ransom fellow. He had a machine with 'im an' it was all gla.s.s and wire an' I don't know what-all an' it burned that big son of a b.i.t.c.h right up."

Witnesses say that there was a pillar of white light, which the pious Miss Phelps describes as "like a door openin' onto the Silver City its own self." This may be the idle talk of simple rustics, but it is a matter on which many voices agree. Travelers from up and down the Opals and whoever was awake that night as far away as Birnam in the western foothills and Troche in the east say that they saw a pillar of white light flaring over the mountains. This vision has pa.s.sed already into local folklore as the "Miracle" of White Rock. It is also said that for days after the incident White Rock experienced an unseasonable warmth and an inexplicable absence of shadows and wind, that the survivors of the tragedy glimpsed strange and foreign vistas through windows or half-open doorways, and that small rocks and twigs were seen to levitate and spin of their own accord, and that strangers were seen around town, silent and remote and "ghost-like." What remains of the town is now under the authority of the Line and no further word of these peculiarities emerges. After the incident Professor Harry Ransom delivered a speech, which Miss Phelps recalled thus: "He said who he was an' who the rest of 'em was. There was old John Creedmoor, who was a gun-hand lookin' to do good with 'is declinin' years, an' there was Miss Liz Allerson, who was a doctor from the old country. An' he made a speech about the you-know-what an' the Line an' how they was the enemies of all good people. An' he said he was sorry about the Mayor an' all the rest and about all that'd burnt to the ground but that was just how the War was, and how it was goin' to go on forever unless somebody stopped it, because the Powers that make the world the way it is are mad. An' he said that him and the woman an' that bad-lookin' old man had had enough, an' it was time to do somethin', an' that was how come they'd gone out West and brought back this secret weapon that was so d.a.m.n good it could, never mind jus' killin' an Agent o' the you-know-what, it could do for the demon what rode 'im, and it could knock an Engine o' the Line isself off its tracks. An' they was gonna, too."

"He said they was goin' east," recalls Mr. Phelan. "On account of a bigger 'n' better somethin's hidden out east- under the World's Walls, he said- and he spoke all about Folk magic an' magic signs and words that could do who-knows-what an' about that ol' Red Republic from back when I was a boy and about how in the future there'd be peace and plenty and a whole lot of other stuff. He talked about the G-- and about the Engines and all that kind of thing but my ears was ringin' from all the bullets and blood and smoke an' that light so I don't know what-all he said. He was a strange fellow, that's all I know."

"He said they had to make it where they were goin'," Mr. Walsh recalls. "Or it was all for nothin'. An' they'd never make it without we helped 'em, meaning we had to give 'em horses and water and food and a new wagon and guns and new clothes and money for the road and incidental expenses and so on. He said it was a great cause an' a miracle and our shot at greatness an' so on. An' maybe he was tellin' the truth or somethin' like the truth an' maybe he wasn't but either way we'd had one -- -- of a night. We took a vote and those as wanted to help 'em was square outnumbered by those as wanted to stone 'em out of town and never speak of it agin. So we did. An' me, I packed up what wasn't burnt and got out mysel' three day later, and that's how come I weren't there when the Linesmen shown up."

We were not fifteen minutes' walk back down the road together and I was still smarting from my bruises when John Creedmoor turned to me and shoved me against a tree, dislodging a light fall of snow.

"I should kill you," he said, "d.a.m.n it I should just-"

He had only one good hand and his leg was hurt and he wobbled but I still did not think I could fight him.

I said, "But-"

"We had little enough chance of success before and now when word gets out- and word will get out- the people of White Rock will not hold their tongues forever- d.a.m.n it in the old days I'd have shot 'em all myself-when word gets out then every idiot in every town from here to the World's Walls will be on the lookout for us to gossip or catch us for a reward or worse try to f.u.c.king help us. This is no game, this is not a story-book, this is not theater, this is war, Ransom. I should kill you. d.a.m.n it, I think I will kill you."

He let go of me, and drew his gun.

Miss Harper put a hand on his arm and persuaded him to change his mind.

"Thank you," I said.

"He's right, Harry."

I said, "But-" again.

"Don't follow us," she said. "Good luck with your Apparatus and Mr. Baxter and all of that, and I'm sorry about what happened to Carver, I really am, and I'm sorry we ever dragged you into our affairs. But it's better for all of us if we each go our ways and- well, just, good luck, Harry."

I was for once lost for words.

I watched them walk away.

I would not see either of them again for a very long time.

The rest of that night was very long and cold and that's all I intend to say on the matter.

THE SECOND PART.

THE RIVER.

CHAPTER 11.

THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND PART.

Well. So that was the first part of my story. After I finished it I wrapped two of the three copies in parcel-paper and entrusted them both to young d.i.c.k Beck. He has taken them into town, with instructions to mail one copy to my friend the famous journalist Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson, and to leave the other copy in a prominent place, such as a pulpit or doctor's office or saloon bar. The mails these days cannot be trusted and who knows whether Mr. Carson will get it or he won't but if he does I hope it will answer certain questions.* d.i.c.k is also taking the usual open invitation to Ransom City. He took a pistol and a knife. The roads are dangerous here. Same as everywhere else these days. Meanwhile I am tinkering with the typewriter and with the Apparatus.

We are camped by a river. I don't know what the locals call it but I have started to think of it as Adela's River, because it is fast and bright and musical like the piano. We have been here for the better part of a week, mostly waiting for d.i.c.k Beck's return. The quartermaster of our expedition is a deserter from the Line by the name of Rapp, who is hard at work planning and ordering and who without whom we would surely be doomed right from the start, but I am no good at that kind of work so here I am.

There are more than a hundred of us now, and I no longer know everyone's name. We are dreamers and drifters. The first of us were men and women of science. That's what I say in every invitation to Ransom City that I leave nailed to hitching-posts or meeting-house doors or &c. n.o.body will be turned away. It's surprising who finds us. Seventh sons. Refugees. Traveling salesmen. We have more than the usual number of h.o.m.os.e.xuals. Jailbirds. Soldiers of every side. Men who disgraced themselves back in the War and a few who distinguished themselves. Edge-of-the-world types, for whom a trip into the unmade lands is all in a day's work- solitary fellows who are silently happy to travel in a pack- men who would have been born Folk if they had only had the option. We have a couple of dozen men and women who left their homes back in '91 to follow Liv Alverhuysen and John Creedmoor east, in what the newspapers at the time called the '91 Dash or the Fools' Pilgrimage or the Great Transcendentalist Nonsense, and who have been wandering ever since, looking for the next promise of salvation. We have more adherents of more faiths than I knew there were, not just the Smilers and the snake-handlers and the Silver City types but also-

* I got it all right, though it took a year to find me. It came in the mail. Subsequent Parts of Mr. Ransom's story had less luck with the mail, and had to be painstakingly a.s.sembled over the course of many years, from scattered fragments. I acquired most of the Second Part fifteen years after it was mailed; I purchased it from a retired officer of the Line, a mail censor, and though I do not like censors I honor my promises, and he shall remain nameless. -EMC The truth is that I thought we would have been arrested long since. I am a notorious individual. When I began sending out my letters I would have bet you I'd be arrested within the week. My letters were a poke in the world's eye. I was tired of anonymity.

I cannot believe the Line forgives me for what happened at Jasper. I cannot believe the Gun has forgotten me. And yet here I am, still walking around free and making speeches and telling people how it will be in Ransom City and now I am thinking that maybe it will even happen. Maybe the world is changing faster than I thought. Maybe the Great War really is coming to an end. From time to time wreckage comes floating down the river, like a piece of an Ironclad's tracks or a tangle of barbed wire. Who knows.

Why are they following me? Well, I'm a good talker. I made my living selling the impossible. I have the map- that precious map she gave me, of the way west beyond the settled world's rim. There are not many like it. I am the inventor of the Ransom Process, which is our great strength and our only defense. I am mad in a way that infects others. I want to do one thing perfect and right and magnificent and that does not go wrong and if I have to build a new world for that to happen in then I will do so. I will go out into lands not yet settled by men and I will go out past lands settled by Folk and out past it all if I must.

Ransom City will be arranged in a wheel, I've decided. The circle is a perfect form and rich in significance, and also practical. We will expand in rings as others join us. We will build tall. It will be a city of elevators and buildings that taper into the sky. The spokes of the wheel will be treelined avenues, where there will be theaters and on the corner of every street self-playing musical instruments. No one will go hungry and everyone will have their share because there will be abundance for all, and every man will work on tasks that please him and suit his spirit. Women too. Children, especially. Each and every tree will be lit at night by the lamps of the Process. If anyone lives out there already there will be fair dealing- there will be peace between us and plenty enough for all without stealing. I am an honest businessman. It will be a new world.

d.i.c.k Beck's back. He got in a scuffle with some fellows who blacked his eye and tore his s.h.i.+rt and bloodied his nose but he could be worse- he does not stop smiling. The letters are in the hands of Fortune now. I told him that in the new city in the unmade lands he'll be Postmaster General, and I do not think he understood I was joking. Well, I guess somebody has to be. Anyhow tomorrow we move on. I should tear this up and start over.

This is the story of my second and third brushes with History. I am going to try to write as much as I can to night, by the glow of the Apparatus. This is the story of how I got to Jasper City and how I got rich and famous and how it all came to an end.

CHAPTER 12.

THE PIANO.

In the weeks and months after White Rock I wandered, drifting in no particular direction, first out west and then north and then back east. I was hungry for much of the winter. I took hard jobs or sometimes jobs of questionable legality. I presented myself as a man of the Smiler faith fallen on hard times and was given bread and shelter and lectures about perseverance and bootstraps. The Apparatus was gone and my savings were gone and my friend Mr. Carver was gone. Even my name was gone. I did not dare call myself Harry Ransom any more. After White Rock who knew who might be looking for Harry Ransom. I grew a beard and I let my hair go wild and I called myself by different names, like John Norton and Joe Reiser and others I forget.

I wrote a hundred letters. I wrote Jess. I cannot tell you where I am so do not even wonder about it. Things have not worked out so well for your kid brother as he hoped and he has got himself into trouble again. The Apparatus came to nothing after all. The future does not belong to me after all. I hope you are doing well in Jasper City and that you are a famous singer or actress or what ever it is that you do on the stage, your letter did not say. Sometimes I wish I could come home. Yours, H.

Or h.e.l.lo May. It's your brother. I was thinking of your letter and how you said you prayed for me, and I was thinking of the time back in East Conlan when we were children and I ran off into the woods and when I came back I said that I had been living with the Folk there, and I think that is the first time you prayed for me, or anyone prayed for me. At the time I was angry but now I know you meant well. Maybe you are right and I have been unwise. A prayer or two would not go amiss and I would pay you back in kind if I knew how.

Or Mr. Baxter, I have never written to you before but you may have heard my name, I am an inventor or businessman like you. Your book about your struggle from rags to riches was a great inspiration to me and I know it just about by heart. In Chapter Three and again in Chapter Six you said that even in your lowest adversity you never despaired because you knew you were made for greater things. That is a good trick and I wish you would tell me how it works.

Maybe you read about what they are calling "The Miracle of White Rock." That was my work. It was not exactly how they wrote about it in the newspapers but it was a h.e.l.l of a show. One day it will change the world. I would like to talk to you one day. I am kind of in trouble but maybe one day a man of your stature might recognize a kindred soul and help out.

Sincerely, Professor Harry Ransom.

Most of the letters I wrote I did not send. I could not afford to. But I sc.r.a.ped together the money to mail that last letter to Mr. Baxter. Then I left town- I didn't dare wait for an answer.

I stayed for three weeks in a town called Split Hoof, where I went by Joe Reiser and made a small living writing letters for other people, mostly about cows. That was where the rumors first caught up with me. A man came to the market with half-a-dozen goats and the news that a rogue agent of the Gun named John Creedmoor and a jet-black wizard called Ransom and a beautiful blond woman had invented an Apparatus that could kill the Engines of the Line or the demons of the Gun, and that they were bringing it slowly along the road east and north to the Station of Harrow Cross itself. He was known as a drunk and n.o.body believed him. I moved on anyhow. In the next town I read about the incident at White Rock in the newspaper.

I had no money to construct a new Apparatus. Even if I had money, I would not have dared. I did not know if I could. I did not remember how it could be done. I had saved a few of my notes and sketches from the disaster at White Rock, but when I looked at them now they were nonsense to me, like childhood poems or riddles. I sketched the mathematics by candlelight but could not make any part of it begin to balance. I could not even recall how the light of the Process had looked. When I pa.s.sed back through the town of Caldwell I purchased dope from a man in an alley and lay all through a cold bright day in the street trying to recall the Light, and though I saw a great many strange things I did not see what I wanted. I missed Mr. Carver terribly.

Once I wrote a letter to say: Mr. Carver. I am sorry that the last thing you said to me was about what I stole. It was not that way. I wish I could explain to you, or you could explain to me maybe. I wish you could come back, so we could talk one more time.

But of course I had no place to send it. Not even a burial place. No body. The Process had swallowed everything.

I went to the town of Domino because I heard they were looking for engineers. The town was built on the banks of the River Ire, just a half-mile upstream from a Line camp. Domino was newly rich and anxious about it. The camp brought in goods and materiel and men from the factories of the north, and some small part of that wealth ended up in Domino's pockets. Main Street sported new and empty second stories and storefronts full of s.h.i.+ny goods n.o.body knew what to do with.

I stood in a line outside one such building. It was one of those days that is not yet spring, where everything is bright but still bitter cold, and the storefronts glittered. When at last I got to the front of the line and into the building, I was allowed to present myself to a black-hatted man behind a desk, who looked at me like I was a defective part or stray nail that might just maybe be hammered into shape. I gave him a false name and an account of my experience and qualifications that was false in details but just about honest enough in substance. He scratched some quick notations in his ledger and told me he guessed I could be useful and named an insultingly low wage. Domino was to be electrified, he said, in the interests of efficiency and modernization and at the urging of the Linesmen in Camp Ire. He pushed a contract and a pen across the table. There was a s.p.a.ce for my name, and beneath it the words For the Northern Lighting Corporation. I said that I would sooner starve than work for the Northern Lighting Corporation. He took back the pen and asked me if I was mad. I s.n.a.t.c.hed the pen back from him, I do not know exactly why, and I said that maybe things hadn't worked out so well for me but I had my pride still. He took off his hat and stood up. We exchanged some further words. It was not my finest hour and I do not enjoy recalling it. Two men lifted me by my arms and removed me from the building and threw me down in the street. I jumped up to my feet and brushed down my coat and turned with as much dignity as I could muster, smiling as if nothing in the world mattered to me, and walked down to the riverfront. There I met a man from the crew of the riverboat Damaris, who offered me a job, mainly I think because of my smile.

"Why not," I said.

I was sick and tired of the land. It was time to give the water a fair try. If the science existed I would have taken to the air instead.

The Damaris was a tall red affair, with a great white wheel, and a profusion of lanterns. She looked like an opera house or a wh.o.r.e house escaped from the big city streets and gone looking for adventure. She was dusty and creaky and rotting in places- no longer young, but still outrageous. She had no business in a business-like place like Domino, and none of her crew liked being anywhere near the Line's Camp. She resupplied and let off pa.s.sengers and hired me and moved on at once, which suited me just fine.