The Rise of Ransom City

by Felix Gilman

  When she got up and walked away I breathed for a moment and wiped the sweat from my brow.

  I called after her, “Wait. Ma’am— my sister. My sister Jess— she’s with you. At your place.”

  She turned her head and smiled a little, like I had done something to please her, and that gave me courage to speak a little more.

  “Now I don’t need to know what she’s doing these days and I do appreciate that you didn’t make any threats to her person— you’ve got a nicer way about you than the other fellows and I’ll tell that to anyone who asks— and I will not say that I’ll give you the Process for her because I don’t know whether I would or not but if you would just let me talk to her— all I can do now is beg, ma’am.”

  She kept walking along beside the river until the dark swallowed her up.

  A few minutes later my sister came walking up that path.

  “Jess—”

  I ran to embrace her. She was trembling.

  She wore a long and plain black coat. Beneath it I guess was the uniform of the Floating World.

  “Long time,” I said. “Why, I haven’t seen you since the day you rode off side-saddle with that salesman from Gibson— I don’t count the time I saw you in that place, we don’t have to speak of it— you know I forget the salesman’s name— you don’t look a day older than you did that day. You don’t. I feel about a hundred years older, Jess. Two hundred. Did you get my letters, ever, any of them?”

  She stopped trembling and she shoved me away. She was always a strong woman— I stumbled.

  “I won’t apologize,” she said. “I won’t apologize for a damn thing, Harry.”

  “Oh, Jess, I wouldn’t ask you to— it’s my fault, I know, don’t think I haven’t figured it out— after I got famous I guess they took you to get to me, or you went to them to hide from Mr. Baxter’s men— I understand.”

  “Oh, you’ve got it all figured out, have you?”

  “Not yet but I will. I’ll get myself out from this trap and you too, I’ll spring us both, I just need a little time—”

  “Who says I need to be sprung?”

  She gave me a defiant look.

  “You should give her what she wants, Harry.”

  “You don’t know what that would mean.”

  “I know plenty.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Oh don’t I?”

  I guess this is none of posterity’s business, and it gives me no particular plea sure to recall it, and besides we were interrupted in our conversation before too long. I was just starting to reminisce about the good old days back in East Conlan when we used to sneak about together in places where we weren’t allowed and always got away with it, and she was just starting to tell me all about the wealth and fame that the proprietor of the Floating World would give us both if only I were less of a fool, and I was recalling how my sister and I loved each other but did not always particularly like each other— well it was not long before we were interrupted by the sound of somebody whistling. I guess it was Scarlet Jen herself. It cut through the night of the city like a noise some beautiful hawk might make out on the emptiness of the Rim. Anyhow my sister turned and heeled like a dog. I hated to see that. She walked off briskly in the direction of the whistle, stopping only once to look back.

  I sat with my head in my hands and watched the river go by.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE INJUNCTION

  Let me tell you about Mr. Baxter’s Injunction. The Injunction, as Mr. Shelby indicated, is an ingenious kind of legal device or weapon. It is made out of words but backed by force, in the form of policemen or private detectives or sometimes armies. By means of the Injunction a man or a hundred men or a whole Territory at once may be compelled to do something or not to do something or to do nothing at all, by order of the Law. There are towns out on the Rim whose whole existence is mandated and measured out day-by-day by Injunctions backed by the Law of Jasper, or the Northwest Territory, or Harrow Cross. Injunctions have broken Baronies and strangled the Keaton City Labor movement and built fortunes out of nothing. I am not a scholar of the law but so far as I know there is nothing the Injunction cannot accomplish. Under the terms of the Injunction Mr. Baxter had conjured up against me I was forbidden to work on the Process or claim it as mine, and I was forbidden to do about a thousand other things. Mr. Baxter was not kidding about any of it.

  I soon learned to pick an undercover employee of the Baxter Detective Agency out of a crowd passably quick, and I could get it right nine times out of ten. They were always there, always watching. I went back to the Ormolu to bang on doors and demand my possessions and my back-pay and to tell Mr. Quantrill what I thought of his disloyalty. Detectives watched me from across the street, and when I emerged they stopped me and searched my possessions. I moved into a room in Hoo Lai and by way of welcome they kicked in the door and confiscated my suitcase. They menaced the fair & statuesque &c until she thought that some performance of hers had somehow offended a deranged admirer, so she left town for Keaton City and so ended that affair of the heart. Ordinarily I am the one who leaves town and I took it hard.

  They harassed Adela. They interfered with her employment. They searched her premises, confiscating a number of her scarce possessions but as luck would have it overlooking the brass leaf from the basement of the Ormolu Theater, which she kept in a drawer wrapped in undergarments to prevent it from floating away. Anyhow I guess they were not satisfied with what they confiscated, because for good measure they brought an Injunction against her, too, claiming that the self-playing piano was also stolen from Mr. Baxter. Like Atoms or like the Angels that the Sisters of the Silver City posit, a million Injunctions can occupy the same space. Adela flew into such a rage at this injustice that I was scared of her.

  They wouldn’t let me seek employment. Nor would they let me leave the city. I walked out along the west road— the detectives followed and brought me back. Nor for some reason that they never troubled themselves to explain or justify would they permit me to me purchase a newspaper, and so it was only through what Adela told me before the litigation and the rage &c that I learned that there was still fighting at Juniper City, and also that several of the fiefdoms of the Deltas had declared themselves in support of Juniper and in support of what everyone was now calling the Red Republic, and that the Second Army of the Archway Engine had been stationed outside Jasper for a week— for the city’s own protection, of course. I was not permitted to approach the Senate Building or Vansittart University. For the first time in life I yearned for the comforts of religion but the detectives stood between me and meeting-circle and I was forbidden to set foot in a Church like I was a Vampire.

  I do not want you to think that I did not stand on my rights. I am a free man of the West and I have my pride and I know my rights under the common law, or at least I thought I did. With the last of my money I attempted to hire a lawyer. I was not permitted to do so. The terms of the Injunction forbade me to discuss the terms of the Injunction with anyone, and what’s more the thing itself was sealed so that neither I nor anyone else could know its contents. The whole matter was cloaked in secrecy. Anyhow no respectable lawyer in Jasper City would ever cross the Baxter Trust, as one such respectable gentleman was honest enough to inform me, in a whisper, before having me ejected from his office.

  My life became a maze of rules that I did not understand. If they could have reached into my head and forbidden me to think or dream they would have done that too. I confess that I began to drink. Drink was permitted to me under the terms of the Injunction, and despair was encouraged. I began to recognize the faces of particular detectives, and because they would never give me their names, even when I confronted them in public places, I began to invent nick-names for them, like Plug-ears and the Pig and the Mosquito. All I had to do was come work for Mr. Baxter, Plug-ears said, and I would be free of them. But that was not true. If I succumbed they would be on my back forever. I daydreamed about revenging myself on them. I am
strong and fit but they were numerous and bull-necked and hard and well-armed. All I had to do was to give the sign and Scarlet Jen and her comrades would come swooping down on them. She had promised to help me, and she was not afraid of any Injunction. But that would be even worse.

  There was no one to help me and no one would give me a fair deal. I had no choice but to cheat.

  CHAPTER 26

  HOW I GOT TO THE TOP

  The day after I was ejected from the law offices of Hines & Wilks I woke before dawn and performed the Ransom Exercises. At that time I was living in a tiny room above a disreputable tavern not far south of the Yards, and within the penumbra of the Yards’ stink and smoke. The Injunction did not forbid the practice of physical exercise, although my landlord disapproved. When I felt sound enough in both body and mind I dressed and set off into the streets. My friends Plug-ears and the Pig were watching from across the street. Plug-ears leaned against a fence and smoked a cigarette, while the Pig paced in circles like a penned animal. I wished them both a very good morning and walked briskly up the street. The detectives made no particular effort to conceal themselves as they followed. I led them toward Swing Street and then in a little circle around some streets I do not recall the names of and then as crowds emerged I led them west along the river. We arrived as the sun was rising at the premises of the Jasper City Mail Company, which was by the way the property of Mr. Baxter, I have since learned though I did not know it at the time. Anyhow the Mail Company had a big building on the outskirts of the city with stalwart postmen carved on its pediment, leaning forward into hail and snow and staring down wolves and wild Folk, armed only with sticks and mail-sacks and good old Jasper City grit. In the shadow beneath those carvings a lot of somewhat less square-jawed postmen were hefting sacks back and forth across the yard and loading them onto mail coaches, which one by one rattled out of the yard and onto the road to parts west. As the fourth and last coach of the day moved out I produced a piece of paper from my pocket and waving it in the air I raced after the coach, calling out over the clattering of wheels and hooves “Hold up, hold up, I’ll double your pay if you just hold up.”

  It is a good thing that I have always kept up my Exercises because mail coaches are faster than they look. The motto of the Jasper City Mail Company that is carved onto their big building is we stop for nothing and it is no joke. As I ran alongside the coach the coachman did not stop, but he did graciously permit me to throw up the letter and a dollar into his cab.

  I stood there with my hands on my knees, panting in a cloud of red road-dust, and I watched the coach go. I also watched with great pleasure Plug-ears and the Pig racing past me after the coach and the letter, both of them red in the face and shouting “Stop! Stop in the name of the law! Stop! That letter contains the property of Mr. Alfred Baxter!” Plug-ears held his hat to his head and looked panicked and the Pig glared at me like he would have liked to stop and beat me dead, and maybe he would have if only he had time.

  The coach did not stop. I do not know whether the coachman could hear them or not. All three of them receded into the red dust and distance like the rising sun was swallowing them up— I lost sight of Plug-ears and the Pig first, then the coach.

  If and when they ever caught up with the letter they would have found that it said:

  A great man seizes the reins of History— he does not let the world move on past him. No problem in business or in life is without a solution to a man of daring and ingenuity. I learned that from you, Mr. Baxter, or whoever wrote your Autobiography. I guess a lot of it was lies but not that. By the time you read this we will both know better where we stand.

  I had no time to gloat or enjoy my freedom. It would not last long. I reckoned I had no more than a few hours of privacy at most. Soon Plug-ears and the Pig would give up the chase, or stop somewhere to wire back news of my trick to their employers, and when that happened their colleagues would find me again quick enough.

  I ran just about all the way back to Swing Street. It was morning and the street was silent. I ran past Dally’s Theater and the Ormolu and the Nightshade and the Golden Dawn Dancing Society and the Gate and then down a side-street corner to where Adela’s apartment’s window opened high over an alley that so far as I know never had any name. She’d become a late riser since falling in with theater-people and I was betting she was still at home— but when she did not respond to my shouting and throwing of stones I got impatient pretty quick. By bracing myself against both walls of the alley I was able to climb to her window. I banged on the glass. I caught her half-dressed.

  “I’ll apologize later,” I said.

  “What in the world do you want— what’s happening?”

  “I gave the detectives the slip.”

  “They’re watching me too, Harry—”

  “I bet they are. No time to talk. Do you still have the leaf?”

  “What are you talking about? I’ll get my clothes and—?”

  “No time. From the basement— from when the Apparatus blew up— you took I guess you’d call it a souvenir, or maybe you meant to study it— not that that matters now —anyhow it was a little brass leaf, about—?” She did not wait for me to finish. She unearthed the brass leaf from her drawer and threw it to me— it twisted in the air and cast a multiplicity of shadows all over the walls— and just as I caught it somebody started banging on her door. I let go of her windowsill and let myself slide down the walls into the alley, where trash saved me from injury.

  I ran back into town and across the bridge into Fenimore, where I had a vague notion that the offices of the Jasper City Evening Post might be found. Well, that may be, but not by the likes of your humble correspondent, no matter how long I searched or who I stopped to ask. Did I despair? Truth is I did, but not for long. Ingenuity, I said to myself, and resourcefulness, and never-say-die. That was how we did things out on the Rim, before I got softened by city living. That was what Mr. Carver would do, and Liv and John Creedmoor. I muttered a whole lot of such things to myself as I walked through the streets and the truth is those words did me a power of good. I realized that I did not need the offices of the Evening Post, but only Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson himself.

  I found him in his usual haunt, Strick’s Tavern down by the river, where we had spoken back on my first day in Jasper. I was not dressed anywhere close to right for that fashionable establishment and to gain entrance I had to first trick and then plead and then when both of those failed shove my way past the doorman. He threatened to call the police. I told him that the police were the last thing I feared. He pulled himself up off the floor and pursued me into the dining-room and laid hands on me as I got to Mr. Carson’s usual table, where the famous journalist was taking lunch with someone who had the look of a Senator. Up went Mr. Carson’s eyebrows. The doorman tried to twist my arm but I was not in any mood to be trifled with and I showed him how things were handled out on the Rim.

  “Hello, Mr. Carson,” I said. “I don’t know what story this fellow’s got to tell you but I know it’s got nothing on mine. Get rid of him and call off this doorman and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  The silver-haired Senator-looking fellow snatched up his napkin like it was a weapon and stood to protest my insolence. I will not record what he said because I did not listen to it. Instead I sat down across from Mr. Carson and fixed him with my frankest and most persuasive expression.

  He did not move.

  “I remember you— Rollins, right? Or was it Rawley? You said you went down with the Damaris— you said you’d invented a what was it now?”

  “Rawlins,” I said. “That was the name I gave. It was a lie. I hope you’ll forgive the necessity. At the time I was in hiding and in fear for my life but now my enemies have found me out anyhow so the way I figure it I have nothing to lose. Truth is I’m Harry Ransom, as in Professor Harry Ransom, inventor of the Ransom Process, perpetrator of the White Rock Miracle, confidant of John Creedmoor and the good doctor Alverhuysen, et cetera and et c
etera.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and said nothing.

  “That’s the truth,” I said.

  “Last I heard you worked for the theater— I think I recall you saying that. You know— you’re not the first fellow I’ve met who claims that name. You’d be surprised how many foolish young men are desperate for that dubious notoriety, and how many of them find their way to me.”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  “These are difficult times, Mr. Whoever-you-are, and people in this city are desperate— if I publish your story and you turn out to be just another madman, I’ll be a laughingstock— that’s if I’m lucky— there are people in this city in a shooting mood.”

  “I can prove it.”

  “You can? Well for the love of all that’s holy don’t blow up this restaurant, Professor Ransom, it’s precious to me.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I lost the Apparatus.”

  “Did you now! Ain’t that a surprise.”

  “Stick with me for an hour or two, Mr. Carson, while I tell you my story— and I’ll bet you the thirty-two dollars that is all I have in the world that before I’m done we’ll be interrupted by Mr. Baxter’s detectives— I guess I should warn you that I’m violating Baxter’s Injunction just talking to you. They sure as hell think I am who I say I am and they are not people who play games.”

  “Lunch with a madman and assault by detectives! I’ve rarely had such a tempting offer.”

  “You want proof? Well . . .”

  I took the brass leaf out of my pocket and held it in front of his face. When I let go of it it hung there, turning slowly.

  Mr. Carson did not take his eyes off it for more than a minute, but after a little while he reached out with his finger and thumb to snuff the table’s candle, thereby reducing the number of shadows the leaf cast hardly at all.