by Felix Gilman
“Professor Ransom, there was a salesman from the Northern Lighting Corporation in town a week ago and—”
“The Northern Lighting Corporation are rogues and villains and I hear tell the Line owns them and they will bleed you dry. I hope you ran him off like you would a vampire. I hope you slapped him like a gnat. You may quote me on that, if there’s any reporters present, and please quote me on this too: What I’m proposing to you is the Melville City Harry Ransom Illuminations, I’m talking about Free Light. . . .”
The smelting-operations gentleman recoiled at the word Free. You have to be careful when talking to rich men. Too much talk of Beauty or Liberation or An End to Drudgery raises their hackles, makes them suspicious. You have to speak in their language.
“I’m talking about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it will not come again, to make your name in the history books, I’m talking about The Future—”
Three things happened at once. I stood, for effect, and began to pace— a banker harrumphed— and Melville City’s future came crashing down through the ceiling, nose-cone first. There was a shower of brick and plaster and a noise like the end of the world. Parts of a chandelier fell where I had been sitting. My dining companions variously threw themselves to the floor or jumped up and started yelling in outrage. I believe I cursed but otherwise kept my cool.
I got a good long look at the rocket as it fell— it seemed to take forever. Dear reader, wherever and whenever you are, I hope that you live in a time when you are not familiar with the weapons of the Line. I’ll tell you that the thing was drill-like, made of black iron, plates, and rivets, and looked about the size of a mule. It breached the ceiling and fell sideways onto the buffet table like an unwanted wedding guest, drunk and mean and clumsy, spilling silver soup-tureens and bottles of champagne, smashing the neck off a big glass swan. Waiters dropped their trays and screamed.
The rocket groaned, shuddered as if waking from a nightmare, and unscrewed itself. It vented a greasy white gas, which quickly filled the room, put out the candles, made women clutch their pearl-necklaced throats and choke. My dining companions started to go dark in the face and fall over. The diners and waiters surged for the exit, and fell over each other, and with awful inevitability they all blocked the doors.
I seized a bottle, poured wine into a napkin, and held it to my face. I don’t know that this was much of a substitute for a gas-mask, and I would not care to repeat the experiment, but I guess it was better than nothing, because I stayed standing while others fell. No matter how I tried I could not help them to their feet again.
I do not recall that I decided to run, but I just found my feet carrying me to the door, and best not to think about what I was stepping on, the swan’s glass wing shattering underfoot, a woman’s necklace, a man’s outstretched hand, I don’t know what else. I held some woman by the arm as I fled through the kitchens and out into the street where a crowd was waiting, and a cheer went up as she and I tumbled together on the cobblestones. She later turned out to be the President of the Six Thousand Club. I am glad that she survived but I am sorry to report that statistics compiled by the Line’s surveyors tell us that Melville has not yet got above Five.*
I breathed deeply, stood, and started back in again, but then someone grabbed me and wrestled me to the ground. I lay on my back and blinked. My sight is very bad in my left eye at the best of times, though you would not know it to look at me. The other eye was so aggravated by the gas that at first I could hardly make out the face of my trusty assistant, Mr. Carver. He looked concerned for my health and safety, as well he might, because I had not paid him in weeks.
A crowd of Melville’s citizens stood all around us. A man in a heather green suit and a kind of raffish collar with a gold pin on it crouched beside Carver. He put a hand on my knee and said, “It’s hopeless, son. No sense throwing your life away, you can’t save them, nobody can now.” It later turned out he was a reporter for the Melville Booster. Light-headed as I was from the wine and the gas I didn’t at first understand what he meant and nearly said, “Save who?” The honest truth is that I had been thinking of running back in for the napkin, which held diagrams of the Ransom Process, and Fortune forbid if it were to fall into the wrong hands. I said nothing. Instead I passed out.
* * *
*Nor would it until well past the turn of the century, and long after Mr. Ransom had departed for parts unknown. —EMC
My pluck and daring were much admired. A sketch-artist captured my likeness for the Booster. He was kind enough to strengthen my chin and flatten my ears. By the end of the day I could have had investors lining up around the corner. But it didn’t feel right. Carver packed up the wagon and we left town that afternoon.
This was not my story of heroism. It was just one of the things that happened that year. I don’t know why I thought to tell it now.
Adversity breeds ingenuity, that’s what they say. It was a great year for ideas and notions and inventions and grand world-changing schemes. In our various travels and escapes me and Mr. Carver met gentlemen and sometimes ladies who were trying to sell sewing machines, and electrical door buzzers, and a method of hypnotism using magnets, and procedures for rain-making and cloud-seeding and the increase of crops. And of course not least of these grand ideas was the Ransom Process, also known as the Ransom Infinite-Escalation or the Ransom Unmoved-Mover Process, or the Ransom Free-Energy Process, or the Ransom Light-Bringing Engine, or a number of other things from time to time and on various patent applications and sideshow advertisements. Mr. Carver and me, we went from town to town all along the edge of the world, displaying the prototypes, seeking investors. We had what you might call a run of bad luck but remained always hopeful. Or at least I was hopeful, I can’t speak for Mr. Carver.
We traveled alongside inventors of procedures for extracting gold from lead, silver, and scat— dog, beetle, and human— and the inventors of cures for cancer using flowers, crystals, exercise regimes, uranium, and magnets. Magnetism was in style that year. We drank and argued with the inventors of several plausible-sounding alternatives to the Gold Standard, and of two or three new religions, and what seemed to be a kind of rural utopia called Land-Tax Distributism. They came out West, like us, looking for territories where the future was still open, where the laws were still unsettled— I mean not least what they call the laws of nature, which as everyone knows are different on the Rim.
They drank. I did not. I abstain from drink for the most part— it clouds the mind. Coffee is my only vice, not counting curiosity and pride.
We lunched on bread and cheese at a rugged brown-canvas camp overlooking a sweep of golden valley, talking with a man by the name of Thomas, who’d come out West to hawk the prototype of a hand-cranked contraption that was so complex in appearance you might have guessed it could read the future or puzzle out the stock market or at the very least calculate the primes, but in fact it only peeled apples, and not very well, as you could tell from the bandages on his fingers. The thing was beautiful to him regardless, and I wished him good luck. We met a man in Hillsdale who said he was secret business-partners with a great wizard of the First Folk, and that together they could bottle the magic of those people, including the seven-mile step and the drumming up of storms and the trick of immortality. Mr. Carver spat on the sawdust floor and said “Bullshit. Fucking bullshit.” I had to agree.
So we came to Melville City and we left Melville City in a hurry. We went south to Carlton, where we were nearly press-ganged into the militia. Another story. We fled Carlton for Toro, and Toro for the mining camps at Secchi, and from there south and south-west. Mania had descended all over the western edge of the world. Armies massed on every horizon. The Engines flashed each other paranoid signals from horizon to horizon, and the Guns brooded and schemed in their Lodge. It seemed like every second person sitting at any bar you might care to walk into was a spy for someone or other. Agents of the Gun camped in the woods and sometimes strolled boldly into town, armed openly,
larger than life, recognizable from the picture-books and not caring who saw them. It took some fancy footwork just to stay neutral. In the banks and futures-markets in the cities back East there was intense giddy speculation over what would survive when it was done. If you were a bright young fellow but not so bright as to have got to blazes out of that whole unlucky part of the world after the Kloan massacre if not sooner then you could make good money sharing your observations by occasional post with the financial speculators in Jasper City or Cray or even Harrow Cross. I was able to pay off certain debts and settle certain lawsuits surrounding the Process, and to purchase a very fine white suit, and also to purchase a new and gleaming white and more spacious wagon for myself and the Light-Bringing Apparatus and Mr. Carver, in which we joined the stream of refugees heading south out of the ever-expanding war zone.
There were rumors. There were always rumors. It was said that both Gun and Line had come out to that country chasing the same quarry. A deserter. A stolen weapon. Secret intelligence. An old man. A beautiful woman. A general. Some secret of the Folk. The war was nearing its end, people said. This battle was for the prize. Somewhere out there was a weapon that might end the war. Well, I was twenty years old in that year and for as long as I’d been alive people had been saying the Great War was coming to an end, that deliverance was knocking on the door. In my view the armies were there for no particular reason at all. The fighting was a purpose in itself. There were scores to settle, and every week brought a fresh humiliation for one side or the other to revenge. They could not extricate themselves, they could not go on or go back, and what ever brought them there was forgotten. I have cousins on my mother’s side who are like that.
Anyhow it was the late days of summer when we came down into Clementine.
Clementine was a little town on a flat and vast plain of fields through which a dirt road cut straight west toward the horizon and east toward what ever the next town over was. I forget what it was called and it doesn’t matter. The fields looked haphazard, and put me in mind of a man who has been on the road for days and not shaved. We put on a show of the Process in a high-raftered barn belonging to a farmer by the name of Mr. Corbey, the proceeds of which paid for our dinner and a night in the barn for our horses and ourselves.
“One day,” I said, as I inspected our accommodations. “One day, Mr. Carver.”
Mr. Carver said nothing, as I recall, just thoughtfully scratched his beard. Then he lay down in the straw and slept like the dead. I on the other hand could not sleep— I have never slept easily. By the soft light of the Process itself I tinkered with the underside of the Apparatus until something I did created sparks, so that I was forced to halt the Process and turn my attention to a small but growing fire in the straw. I stamped and cursed and beat with my fine white jacket until it was gone.
“Mr. Carver,” I said. “I hope that amused you.” He said nothing, and I admit I was exasperated.
It was dark in the barn and I have never liked the dark, and outside there was a bright yellow moon, and so I went walking, out across Mr. Corbey’s flat fields and into town.
Clementine had maybe three dozen buildings, counting barns and out houses. They were arranged like wooden crates laid out carelessly along the side of the road, or like junk scattered from the back of a passing Engine. Every window but one was unlit.
Over someone’s store some black birds perched along the top of a black sign. The night was warm and windless. There was a drowsy wilderness silence, except for the sound of my own footsteps, and the occasional insect going about its business, and the clack-clack-clacking of a typewriter, which somebody behind that one lit window was operating despite the unsociable hour.
As was my habit I thought how Clementine might look if it got Illuminated. How the softly glowing lamps of the Ransom Process might be strung along the rooftops where the birds roosted and how travelers coming along the road from the huge darkness to the west or the east might see the constellation of Clementine shining before them and what they might think it might mean.
The typewriter and the electric-lit room over the general store in which it sat belonged to three officers of the Line. There was some of that old menace in its sound— I hope that if you are reading this in days to come you will not remember what the machines of the Line sounded like and you will not know what I mean. Those three uniformed men of the Line had been at the show that evening, scowling and taking notes, and now they were no doubt making a report. If I know how Linesmen operate, they had not paid for the room but requisitioned it according to the universal Authority their masters claimed. The officers of the Line were always everywhere that year, out on the Rim that is, watching and making reports and looking for what ever they were looking for. I myself had nothing to hide so far as I knew, but nor did I care for the sound of their report-making, so I took myself off to the edge of town.
Out in front of Clementine’s westernmost shack there was a sign promising food and water and music, and beside it a bench. A dog slept on it. It did not object when I sat down beside it.
The bench was as good a place as any to sit and watch the road and think. The Ransom Process was far from perfected in those days and there was always a lot of thinking to be done.
I don’t know how long I sat there before I first caught sight of someone coming along the road.
The road was a wide flat band of dirt. It was a clear night with a bright moon and you could see a long way into the west. When I first saw them coming they were very small and distant. The two of them were just one speck. More accurately they were at first like a tremor of motion in the darkness, nothing that had a discernible shape or form. A tremor like a tiny wave or ripple in the Ether— except that the Professors in the big cities will tell you that the dark is a stillness in the Ether, whereas Light is the Ether in motion. Well, I thought about that for a while, and about what it would be like if the natural laws of the world were inverted so that the Dark was motion and the Light its absence. I thought that maybe if you got far enough out West things might get turned on their head like that. But then would we still call the dark the dark, or the light the light, or would the words change with the things themselves? I thought that Ether is just a word for what we cannot name, and maybe motion is just a word too.
By the time I had put these speculations to rest and returned my attention to the world and the road the figures were a good deal closer. Now I could see that there were two of them, and they were on foot.
The dog rolled its head lazily to regard them.
Not for the first time that year I regretted somewhat that I was not carrying a gun, because who knew what kind of person might be on foot on the roads out there at night. I might have quietly crept away but as they got closer I saw that one of them was a woman, and I took that as a sign they were not likely dangerous. A few minutes later I saw that the man with her was old, and walked with a stick. The woman was fair-haired and even in the dark you could see she was tired and thin as they stopped before me and I smiled and told them, “Welcome to Clementine.”
The old man said, “We’re just passing through.”
“Harry Ransom,” I said. I extended my hand, and the old man took it, somewhat reluctantly but I took no offense. People were wary those days.
“This your store?”
“No. Nor the dog.”
“Who are you, then?”
“Professor Harry Ransom,” I said, “When doing business. Inventor, businessman, Light-bringer. And I am just about always doing business these days. So tell me, how are things out West the way you came— I heard Clementine was pretty much the edge of things.”
“Not quite,” said the woman. “But close enough.”
“What’s business like out there?”
“We’re not in business.”
She had an accent I couldn’t place, and I was widely traveled for my years. She was weathered by long and hard travel but underneath her features were refined.
“Refugees?”
“Yes.” She thought before saying, “I suppose in a manner of speaking we are.”
From the way the old man was leaning on his stick it seemed to me he should not be walking all night.
I stood. The dog looked up, took a brief interest in me, and then dropped its head back down between its paws.
I pointed back toward the town.
“A Mr. Corbey gave me and my assistant the use of his barn for the night. Ordinarily we sleep in the wagon so a barn is as good as a hotel for us. You’re welcome to join us and I doubt Mr. Corbey will mind.”
They looked at each other then spoke at once.
He said, “Mind your business, Professor.”
She said, “We couldn’t pay you—”
“Don’t think of it,” I said. “I need the company. Mr. Carver doesn’t talk much. That’s my assistant. A fine mechanic and a trusty hand in our various misadventures but not a conversationalist.”
From the look on the old man’s face it seemed he did not like me much.
I said, “You are—?”
“Harper,” the woman said. “Miss Harper.”
“And is this your father?”
He thought for a moment too long before nodding.
“There are Linesmen in town,” I said. I pointed toward the lit window, which was a faint star in the distance.
They both had a kind of hunted look to them. That’s why I said that.
“Don’t mean to imply anything,” I added. “Just thought as fellow travelers on these roads you might want to hear the news.”
Old Man Harper nodded again. “We’ll be moving on, Mr. Ransom.”