The Rise of Ransom City

by Felix Gilman

  Floating World and a dozen places I’d never heard of before, but which for him were guiding lights.

  There was the sound in the distance of an Engine. At that point the

  Line ran parallel to the river, ferrying troops and freight and passengers between the western Stations and Harrow Cross. The Engine was miles behind us and far out of sight but you know how they sound, the distant throb and drone that makes your head ache before you can even really hear it.

  “I always thought one day I’d go to Jasper,” I said. “Now I don’t know.”

  “There’s beautiful women there, more than you can imagine.”

  “I have a sister who lives in Jasper. Jess. She was pretty enough last time I saw her.”

  “You’re what-would-you-call-it, the bachelor type, right?”

  “I’ve had little time for love, I guess.”

  “Lucky man, lucky man. Women! Well, when we get to Jasper you can do what ever pleases you, and I can get a new start with a new job and a new wife. Damn it, that woman—”

  I had no stomach to hear his many and varied grievances against

  Amaryllis again, and so I interrupted him to suggest how the mechanism of his hat could be improved. He looked at me first with skepticism, then with interest. Then, because he had been talking about magic, I started talking about light, and some of the ideas I had for how light might be used in the theater, and then I started talking about the workings of the self-playing piano, and about other ideas, many of which I do not recall, that started coming to me in a rush of excitement that I had not felt in some time, not since back in East Conlan when the notion for the Apparatus had first occurred to me. It was like a dam had burst in me. Maybe it was the talk of Jasper City, or maybe it was the talk of magic. I recall theorizing mechanisms for stage-flight, and card-playing automata, and mahogany boxes between which the Great Rotollo’s beautiful assistants might be appear to be transported from side to side of the stage, or maybe they might in actual fact be transported, why not, perhaps by vacuum-tubes or . . .

  There was a screeching sound that made me fall silent. I took it for an owl.

  “Well anyhow,” I said. “That’s just how I think.”

  “You’re an inventor,” Rotollo said.

  “I am. I was.”

  He sighed. “Times are changing. Back in Hamlin, I think it was, I saw a man who could make rain, you know? He had some contraption of electrical rods and I-don’t-know-what. What’s card tricks next to that? Nothing, that’s what.”

  “Depends on the card trick, I guess.”

  “That piano, that’s a clever piece of work. I’ve seen it— I’ve seen it playing itself. Don’t pretend otherwise, I know a trick when I see one— damndest thing. Never seen anything like it before. Did you make it?”

  “Well,” I said. I did not want to say that I did, because it was not true, Kotan did, but nor could I bear to disown it.

  “Damn clever,” Rotollo said. “Damn clever. What will they think of next.”

  I felt I had betrayed Kotan, whoever or what ever or wherever that was, or that I had betrayed the wonderful device, or both of them. I had an urge to run back in and apologize to the piano. Instead I shook my head and said, “To the new century. May it be better than the last.”

  “Not much chance of that from where I’m standing. It’s every man for himself to grab as much as he can before the world falls apart once and for all— that’s the mystic wisdom of the Great Rotollo.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Rotollo. I’m an optimist.”

  The Great Rotollo pinched his cigarette and sucked deeply on it.

  The screeching sound repeated itself. I realized that it was not an owl— it was the Engine, which was now only three or four miles away, which is no distance for an Engine, coming up parallel to us and behind us at speeds that rendered the Damaris obsolescent and absurd. We were both men of the world, Rotollo and I, and so we pretended that it did not unnerve us.

  “My wife likes you,” Rotollo said.

  I said, “What?” like I hadn’t heard, and I braced for a fight.

  He repeated himself, a little louder, over the noise of the Engine. “She mentions in particular your smile. Says I haven’t smiled like that in years. Which I don’t doubt is true. Do it onstage enough you forget the real thing. Was hoping the two of you might run off together, or get caught in flagrante, quick divorce, I’m free again in Jasper City . . . Don’t suppose you’d reconsider?”

  “Not much chance of that, Mr. Rotollo— Joe.”

  He shrugged, then threw his cigarette over the side.

  “How does it work? The piano.”

  “Mathematics,” I said.

  “Like it’s haunted,” he said. “You know I’ve been out on the Rim for a long while— a long while— and I’ve seen things— I’ve seen hauntings and spirits. I performed at a Hospital once where—”

  There was a flash and a thump from over in the direction of the Engine.

  “Does it think? Tell me the truth. Is it a machine or something else?”

  That was a question I had thought about a great deal, often while working on the piano late into the night, alone but for the rolling of the boat and the murmurings of drunks lying under corner tables. The piano was utterly self-sufficient, making music by and for itself out of nothing. Maybe that is what life is. The truth was that I did not know exactly what it meant to think or feel or live or have a soul, and I did not have any quick answer for the magician. What I sometimes thought about late at night, when the piano seemed to be rearranging itself of its own accord, was about the birth of the great powers of the world. I mean the Gun and I mean the Engines of the Line.

  Now I am no great student of history, but I know that there was a time before either of them was here in the world to trouble us. There was a time when a gun was just a gun, and there was a time when men made Engines to serve them and not the other way around. I don’t know whether we were at peace then or not, I guess not, but things were better. I have heard some people say that there are spirits in the land just waiting for the right kind of forms to take and that is how the Gun and the Line came about. I have heard it said that we ourselves made them, that something in those forms spoke to us and to our nightmares and obsessions and that is how the world changed, because of us. You do not see these speculations written down often and it takes a certain courage to write them now but everyone hears speculation of this sort. As I recall Old Man Harper was of the first school of thought and Miss Harper the second and Carver stayed silent as if he knew better than everyone. Anyhow sometimes I thought about the piano that way, and what the world would be like if what ever happened back then happened again, maybe right at that moment in the rolling fragrant dark of the Damaris.

  “It’s only a machine,” I said.

  While I had been thinking, the Great Rotollo had been rummaging in the pockets of his jacket and now removed a small gray stone. It was the size of an egg and smooth on the underside and whorled on the top, a little like a fossil, which was perhaps what it was, or a carving of a tiny city— I do not know, because it was dark and he did not show it to me. He moved his hands quickly over and under it as if to show that it was attached to no strings, then stretched his arm out over the water and opened his hand.

  The stone did not drop.

  What’s more it became clear after roughly half a minute that it was not falling behind us, but kept pace with the slow eastward progress of the Damaris. Or rather, it seemed that the world moved, but it did not— it was hard to look at.

  “No trick,” Rotollo said.

  The Engine was getting closer and very loud. You could see its lights glowing white between the trees. There was another flash and a thump from over in the direction of the Engine and the stone wobbled a little. Rotollo reached out and plucked it back out of the night and put it in his pocket.

  “The only thing I’ve got that isn’t a trick!” he shouted. “I don’t show it. Never show it. Found it on the
side of the road, out on the Rim— above the side of the road, you know? Outside a little nothing town called Kenauk. It does what it does. Don’t know why. Like a little bit of another world. Like what ever came before. Everything changes all the time. You know, maybe there’s something to this secret-weapon thing after all. Everything, all the time, changing.”

  He said more than that, in fact I think he tried to communicate to me his whole metaphysics of the world in shouting and gestures over the noise of the Engine, but much of it was lost on me.

  “Jasper City!” he shouted.

  “What?”

  “Jasper! When you get to Jasper— don’t look at me like that, kid, you’re ambitious! I said ambitious! You’re riding this thing all the way to Jasper same as me and when you do you’ll be looking to get rich and famous— do you make weapons?”

  “What?”

  “You should read the newspapers!” he shouted.

  He lit another cigarette. I noticed that he was smoking from a yellow packet stamped with the crest of Jasper City, and the name of the Baxter Trust.

  “Come find me, when we get to Jasper!— if you don’t want to work for the weapon-makers!”

  The Great Rotollo handed me his card. It had his name on it, with a wonderful rococo flourish on the R.

  “Ormolu Theater! Swing Street! I got a contract! Two months, percentage, continuation! Can hire if want to!”

  “I don’t know—”

  What I was thinking was that I had always seen myself as a man of action, whose destiny it was one day to change the world, not merely to entertain it. But I took the card anyhow.

  “I could use a clever fellow! Who knows? Who knows? The future, right?”

  At that moment the Engine was passing directly alongside us. I could see its smoke blotting out the stars. There was another thump and a flash of red behind the trees. I recognized the sound of explosives and I think the Great Rotollo recognized the sound at the same moment, because he dropped his cigarette and cursed. Then there was a lightning-strike of white that I took to be the lamps of the Engine flaring in sudden anger. There was a whistling sound in the sky and a thump and a splash not so far away from us, then a thick sheet of water came up over the edge of the boat and slapped into me, making me gasp and splutter. The Damaris lurched backwards. The whole immense thing, the Damaris I mean, rose up rearing like a spooked horse so that I fell into Rotollo, and Rotollo fell over the side into the water, and several lanterns fell off their hooks and onto the deck and started to burn.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE WOUNDED ENGINE

  I don’t know exactly what happened, and I guess I never will.

  What I know is that the meandering path of the wide River Jass and the straight mountain-cutting length of the Line between Archway Station and the West came close to intersecting, in the depths of a swampy wood. As the Damaris crawled upriver the Kingstown Engine came hurtling along the Line. Persons unknown waited in the wood and when the Kingstown Engine approached they had attempted to derail it by blowing the tracks. Those were the thumps we had heard. It is not an easy matter to slow an Engine and it kept going for some time, and in furious retaliation against its attackers it launched rockets wildly into the woods and into the night, one of which had whistled over the treetops and hit the river just in front of the Damaris. The resulting disturbance of water lifted the Damaris, throwing her back and to one side. She was an ancient vessel and not equipped to withstand such a shock. Rotten wood splintered, rusted nails turned to powder, frayed ropes snapped. Her tall wheel broke away from its mechanism, which in turn tore a hole in her hull.

  The Kingstown Engine survived, later arriving in Archway mostly unscathed, or so the Line claimed. The outrage was officially blamed on Agents of the Gun, but there were per sis tent rumors that it was the work of John Creedmoor and Liv Alverhuysen and Professor Harry Ransom, putting their strange weapon to work. I believe that it was the first shot of what we later called the Battle of Jasper, which I guess I will write about when the time comes.

  The Damaris did not survive. She turned on her side and sank, pulled over by the listing wheel. She sank in a stately fashion, as befitted a lady of her advanced years. Lines of pennants and lamps snapped free of their fastenings and slithered into the water. Deck chairs followed. Then the passengers came out onto the deck and held their hats on their heads or clutched their suitcases close like children as they jumped feet-first into the water. The crew followed close behind. The boat’s cook had saved a bottle of whiskey and Mr. John Southern hefted a stuffed satchel of valuables. Nobody made any effort to pump out the bilges, as far as I could see, or what ever it is that one does to save a sinking ship. Certainly I did not.

  The river was wide and slow, black and warm. Passengers and crew scattered across it in all directions. I saw the Great Rotollo swimming away north, his wake expanding and glittering in the light of the flaming deck. I think I saw his wife Amaryllis heading in the same general direction, while I think Mr. John Southern went south. There was no consensus as to which bank to swim for, or whether to swim against the current or with it. There was no plan. What had held us together was broken.

  I do not mean to suggest that there was panic, because there was not, or very little. We had all known the Damaris could not last forever. Nothing does. There was a general air of resigned dignity. Mr. John Southern gave one last affectionate nod toward the prow of his boat before he folded his arms over his suitcase and fell backwards into the water. The cook jumped feet-first with a deep sigh, as if this happened to him all the time.

  I myself turned and ran back into the bar in order to save the piano, or at least a part of it.

  The piano was sliding down the slowly tilting floor toward a heap of broken glass and furniture and paintings and plants and cutlery. I staggered sideways toward it. Tumbling chairs tried to tackle me— I dodged and jumped and disentangled my legs from theirs. I cut my hand on a broken bottle. On reaching the piano I found that my own weight was not nearly enough to halt or even slow its slide. I took a butter-knife from a passing cabinet and used it to lever open the piano’s frame. The Great Rotollo’s other dove fluttered back and forth overhead, I do not know how it had found its way into the room but it was apparently unable to find its way out— I could not help it and besides it was the bird or the piano and I do not regret my choice. I pried out part of the winding-mechanism, a heavy cylinder of brass and wood, etched with the piano’s codes, shaped like a sacred scroll. It was the part with kotan scratched into it.

  By the time I had accomplished this I was the last person left on the boat. The upper deck dipped to starboard into the black water. It rose up to port behind me. I held the mechanism tightly beneath my arm and I threw myself into the water.

  I sank.

  Like I think I have said, I cannot swim, and besides the piano’s mechanism was shockingly heavy and unwieldy. I kicked madly to put distance between myself and the sinking boat, which only drove me further down. The strength of the river took hold of me. All I could see was blackness, either beneath the water or above it. I recall that I panicked. I recall that I was quite certain that so long as I held on to the mechanism I would be safe. This was a self-defeating conviction but an irresistible one. I continued to sink.

  Slowly darkness gave way and I began to see a red light at the edges of the world.

  I do not recall letting go of the mechanism or how I came to be clutching instead a piece of wood that turned out to be a bench from the Damaris’s bar. I do recall that when I finally noticed that the mechanism was lost I was too tired even to regret it— regret would come later.

  I recall floating aimlessly downstream, all alone in the warm night.

  At last the current took me toward the river’s bank, where I came to rest in the tangled roots of a huge green tree.

  I struck out for solid ground but I found none in any direction. The woods were swampy, like I said. They smelled green and wet. Black water came halfway up my legs. Ta
ll cattail stands horripilated. Every moonlit ripple in the water looked to my imagination like a snake swimming toward me— every vine or frond that dangled from the trees looked snake-like too. There were fever-dream scatterings of fireflies— there were invisible insects that bit. Again and again I pushed through walls of wet fern and reed to look out over yet another expanse of dark weed-thick water.

  Eventually I climbed up into the roots of another tree and decided to wait out the night.

  The root was thick as the back of a horse, and not as uncomfortable as one might imagine. I sat with my back against the trunk and considered my situation.

  I had no means of making fire, no food, very little money, a half-completed letter to my sister Jess, and the Great Rotollo’s business-card. I had no weapons— only a small pocket-knife that I used to use to work on the piano, and it was hardly fiercer than a fingernail. I had only one shoe, and it was both soaked and slimy.

  I still wore the jacket of the russet suit Mr. Southern had given me when I signed on with the Damaris. There had been a dried rose in the lapel but it was gone now. The jacket had been a loan not a gift and I guessed it belonged to Mr. Southern still, but because I saw no likelihood of returning it to him, and because he had not paid me in weeks, and because in any case it was now so vile that he would not want it back, I decided it was mine now. I hung it to dry from a protuberance on a nearby branch. It was like a sort of company. I half-expected it to speak to me in Mr. Carver’s voice.

  I did not know where I was. I knew that I was on the edges of the Tri-City Territory, south-west of Gibson and west of Jasper. I knew that I was not far from the River Jass. But I did not know what woods I was in, or where the nearest town might be. The River Jass ran westward, and I assumed therefore I had been carried by the current some distance west, away from Jasper City and back out toward the Western Rim. I did not know how far. Far enough that I was alone— whoever else had survived the sinking of the Damaris, they were nowhere in evidence.