by Felix Gilman
I do not know what I said in response to this.
“We’ll have what we need with or without you, sir. As a matter of fact I don’t know why we keep you around.”
The other two looked anxious about this speech. I guess I confused their sense of hierarchy. But they did not protest or apologize, and all three of them turned their backs on me again when the light of the prototype suddenly pulsed.
During this conversation the light of the prototype had steadily increased and at the same time the room’s shadows had sharpened, and the number of phantoms had increased. Many but not all of them looked like Folk. I would swear that among them I saw Mr. Carver. The engineers and me were greatly outnumbered by those phantoms.
Later that day I attempted suicide. As it turns out the windows of the tall spikes over Harrow Cross Station are not made of glass, though they look like glass, and even in a heavy runaway wheelchair you cannot break them.
CHAPTER 31
ADELA
I was going to write a lot more about Harrow Cross and our experiments and how what ever people say about me I did not serve the Line willingly, and I did what I could to defy them. Well I guess you will have to believe me or not as you please. We have had more sightings of Line Vessels overhead. Deserters, perhaps, or scouts. Our camp has surely been discovered. I have no time to waste and I want to write about what happened to Adela.
I got the second letter from Adela about the same way I got the first. One of the engineers passed it to me. I did not see who passed it to me. He moved quickly away and by the time I had turned my chair he was lost among a crowd of other engineers and secretaries and frozen phantoms in various modes and eras of dress.
A corner stuck out of the edge of a stack of reports and I saw her handwriting. I tucked the corner back into the reports and did not pull it out again until that evening, when the adjutant had returned me to my apartment and locked the door behind me.
Harry—
I know by now that my first letter got to you and my messenger has kept his silence, at least so far. I will risk another letter. As a matter of fact I suppose there is nothing to risk.
Since we last spoke I have resided in Harrow Cross. From my window I can see the Spike where they tell me you are being held, at least on days when the smog clears.
They put me to work, just as they did with you. They do not think very well for themselves. It is not pianos or Orange Trees that they want me to make! But I have been here long enough that I know how things work and I believe this messenger can be trusted.
I was not honest with you from the start and so you must think I had no reason for what I did. I do not know if you are angry with me and I do not know if it will make any difference if I explain.
I do not want to know that you are angry, or how badly I have hurt you. I have told the messenger to take no messages back from you.
Much of what I told you about my childhood was a lie. Not all. It is true that my father was the Baron of Iermo. It is a beautiful country for all of its faults, and nothing like this place where we have found ourselves. I told you that I left because my father and my brothers would not tolerate my work; that I struck out for independence of my own accord. That was not true, though you are not the only one to whom I told that lie, and I suppose at times I believed it myself.
My father had debts. Every one of the Barons of the Deltas has debts; his were worse than most. He was ambitious and he wanted Iermo to grow. He loved his children very much. He became indebted to wicked men, and to free himself he called for help from wickeder men. He secured a loan for Iermo from the Baxter Trust. I imagine you know how the rest of the story goes. In the space of two years everything in Iermo belonged to the Line. Within three years Iermo was at war with its neighbors, and my father was a broken man. Most of my brothers were dead. I shall not say what became of the man I was to marry; it is too humiliating. I fled. All of this happened long before I met you.
I came north to become someone new. I had always been clever, and I had enjoyed building clever and beautiful things. My father used to say that I would make Iermo’s fortune one day. I worked in Gibson City and I made the piano but then Gibson City fell to the Line too, and I lost the piano, and I was arrested. I understood that there was no escaping, nowhere in the world. When they let me go I came to Jasper City meaning to shoot Mr. Baxter for my family’s honor and my own and so that nothing else would fall into his grasp.
I do not expect you to understand; we are not made the same way. But I could not go until I had explained.
Our time together on Swing Street was an accident— distraction— a diversion— but you must believe me when I say that it was a very happy one. I am sorry; I always knew that it could not last. They would not let it. I lied to you, Harry— I lied for the sake of lying. I lied to be free of the truth. In the end I lied to you to get to Mr. Baxter, and I am sorry that I did any of that. It accomplished nothing. We should have run away together!
I remember how you babbled that morning about Ransom City. It was a good idea, though I would have made you change that name.
Around that same time I got a letter from my sister May. That letter came through official channels, and May’s outlook on life was such at that time that only a very few words had to be smothered by the censor’s black ink. What I mean is that she wrote to tell me that she had abandoned the worship of the Silver City. She had seen that in these times of disruption and uncertainty the world had no use for airy promises of heaven, but needed instead the firm hand of Power and Authority, Here and Now. She had therefore petitioned to enter the service of the Engines at Archway. It was a hell of a long letter with a whole lot of words about the Power and Glory of the Engines and how they would prevail through these Difficult Times and how their enemies would learn a Hard Lesson, and none of it is worth recording for posterity. Sorry, May.
I could not go until I had explained, indeed. I did not like Adela’s implication. I had no intention of letting her go! I saw that I could do good for someone.
I summoned each of my engineers into my office one-by-one under the pretense that I wished to discuss the Process. Once I had the door closed behind them I said to each of them in turn, “I know it was you.”
Well, there is hardly a man or woman in Harrow Cross who does not have a guilty conscience about some failure or infraction or sin. I heard a number of groveling confessions that would be of interest only to other men of the Line— half the time I could not even understand what rule or protocol they thought they had violated. I had to go through six such interviews before I identified the fellow who was Adela’s messenger. “The message?” he said. “Sir, I—”
“You,” I said. “I knew it was you.”
Truth is I could not tell him apart from any of his colleagues. He looked furtive, ambitious, scrawny.
“Don’t tell anyone, sir. I’d get—”
“You take messages. You need the money or you’re being blackmailed or who-knows-what—I don’t care to know. You’ll take a message for me.”
“She told me—”
“I’m telling you. I’m your damn boss, what ever your name is. You’ll take a message or I’ll call down the Engines on you. Me and the Kingstown Engine are the best of friends. Now listen. Tell her— I don’t know what to tell her— don’t you try to get away damn you— tell her there is nothing to forgive. Tell her what’s a few lies or a few hundred lies between friends— I lied too. Tell her I was happy too. Tell her we will be happy again. Got all that?”
I was not born yesterday and it crossed my mind that any response I sent might be intercepted— what’s more it was possible that the letter had been allowed to reach me precisely so that I might be encouraged to tell my story in return, and let slip secrets. It was even possible that the letter was not from Adela at all. I couldn’t know. So when I collared the go-between the next day and made him take a letter, I said nothing in it except some harmless recollections of happy days on Swing Street.
One week later she responded in kind. There was no more talk of going, I was pleased to see.
I found that my hip was not hurt so bad as I’d thought. It was painful to stand but no more than I could bear. I demanded that the adjutant bring me a walking-stick. When she refused I made one myself out of a lever from an abandoned prototype. I sent the chair away.
I sent Adela another letter, written for secrecy’s sake in the margins of an encyclopedia. I got a letter from her written on the back of an invoice, in which she said that she was crying from happiness as she thought of my face. I wrote to her about East Conlan and about my father and she wrote to me about Iermo. She wrote to me about her work— she was working with a team of engineers on improvements to the design of the Heavier-Than-Air Vessel— and I wrote to her about mine. We wrote about the future.
Our go-between was called up to the front, on account of the fighting in the Northwest Territory was going badly, as the leaderless armies of the Stations that had lost their Engines were breaking every which way or striking out for independence. I found another go-between quick enough. Now that I was on my own two feet and limping around again I was a holy terror to the engineers of the Project, always threatening to have them sent away to the front if they displeased me, and they did not know if I could do that or if it was an empty threat. Neither did I. It is true that all three of the men who had spoken about the raids on the Folk in front of me had been called to the front, though who knows if that was because of my recommendation or not. Anyhow they all jumped when I told them to jump, and they took messages if that was what I demanded.
A—It’s me. Write back at once if this gets through. I have missed seeing your words. I have missed you. This has been one hell of a long week with no one for company except for the engineers and the phantoms and the threats of the Engines. What news? They tell me they tested the bomb at the front and it did not meet expectations. I do not think they will be satisfied until it is big enough to swallow the whole world. Maybe that’s their plan. My leg is better. Last I wrote to you I said how when we are out of here and building the place you won’t let me call Ransom City the avenues would be lined with Automated Orange Trees like we built back on Swing Street, only bigger. I am anxious to know if you consider this practical. Write back if you can.—H
H—it got through. See? They cannot keep us apart. I wish I had told you when we were together that I loved you but I did not understand it then. I know better now. Write back a thousand times. I consider the Automated Orange Trees eminently practical. I shall draw up plans.—A
That was the first time either of us wrote the word love but not the last. Once you start it is hard to stop. We wrote love love love on diagrams of Heavier-Than-Air scopes and on the backs of requisition orders for top-range electromagnets and on cables from the front reporting experimental results. We made vague plans for escape. We promised that we would meet again and cover each other in kisses and walk hand in hand alone into the West. Once she confessed that she was no longer beautiful and I supposed she was talking about her wounds from Mr. Baxter’s office and I said that what ever she meant I did not care. Truth is I could not imagine seeing here again. She was words now— she was the notion of love— I was intoxicated by those words. I was like a child again— I admit it. We spoke of marriage, children of our own. She disclosed her location to me— no more than half a mile from where I was kept but it might as well have been another world. Sometimes we were afraid to put our messages in writing— sometimes we were fearless and sometimes fear gripped us the same sudden way love had— and when that happened we would commit nothing to paper but have our go-betweens mouth words for us— I have seen a whole lot of strange things in my time but nothing stranger than a burly officer of the Line whispering to me “One day we will be married under the western skies.”
I got letters about how the Baxter-Ransom Trust was falling apart everywhere, about how its properties had been seized in Thurlow and how its stock had collapsed in Gibson and how its operations out on the Rim were going rogue and all of that. I paid them no mind, and wrote love-letters on the back of them. We told each other that the free and perfect city of the future would be populated with boys and girls with her beauty, my way of talking, her courage, the combination of our mutual genius— yes, we flattered each other. Can you blame us? I guess this exchange of secret letters was the great romance of my life. I don’t know. Now that I look back on it I cannot quite recover the intensity with which I felt for those words. It was everything to me at the time but it happened to a different man, somewhere in the margins of his existence. I think that I gave too much of my life to ambition and not enough to love. Maybe things will be different in the world to come. I am sorry, Adela.
Adela wasn’t the only person who got letters smuggled in to me. As the months went by I guess Harrow Cross’s security got worse and worse. The War was— you could call things uncertain, I guess. Seven or eight or nine or none of the Engines had been destroyed, maybe forever, depending on which reports you trusted. Arsenal, Dryden, and Fountainhead Stations were in a state of open revolt— Gloriana Station’s leaderless armies had declared for the Republic. I hear the original forces of the Republic were not always too sure of their new allies but they could not stop them. Anyhow it was open to debate who was the real Red Republic and who was not. Anyone could put on red and say they were fighting for the Republic and for what it stood for. Opinions differed on exactly what it stood for but it was generally agreed what it stood against, namely what was left of the Line. Strange times. Harrow Cross itself was in a state of uncertainty. For the first time in a long time there was crime in the streets of Harrow Cross. Painted slogans appeared on the walls. The frequency of moving-pictures was doubled, then for no reason that was ever made clear moving-pictures were abolished.
A letter from Dr. Lysvet Alverhuysen appeared one evening beneath my pillow:
Harry. I was so happy for you when I heard you got rich like you always wanted, and so sad when I heard that you were working for the Line, like you always said you would never do. You picked the wrong side but I want you to know that it is not too late to make amends. The Red Valley Republic lives again but our struggle is dire. We need your Bomb, Harry. We need your plans. We have a contact and can smuggle them out if you . . .
I did not believe that was really from Liv. Maybe this letter was really from John Creedmoor:
Ransom. This is from John Creedmoor. You damned son of a bitch, you traitor. I should have shot you when I had the chance. I saw them test your Bomb at Log-Town. Maybe one day I will shoot you.
And I do not doubt that this letter was from the Agent Gentleman Jim Dark:
Professor Ransom. I have not forgotten our appointment. One day you and I will talk. Your friend, “Gentleman” Jim Dark.
And nor do I doubt that this letter was from Mr. Angel Langhorne, my friend the rain-maker:
Mr. Ransom— I just want you to know that I know it’s not true what they say about you. Our correspondence back in Jasper meant the world to me. One day I hope we’ll meet.
I heard about the test at Log-Town, and how many men on both sides died. I was not there. I do not intend to write about it.
Anyhow they moved Adela out of Harrow Cross and we lost contact. They moved her to Archway. While she was still en route the Archway Engine disappeared and that Station too fell into chaos and for a long time I could not discover where she had been diverted to. Before she departed she sent me a copy of her plans for the reconstruction of the self-playing piano. I still possess them.
As it happens I was studying those plans at my desk in my apartment on the evening when the adjutant unlocked my door, and entered without a word of explanation or apology, with her pistol in her hand and an expression of bemusement on her face, and announced that there was a mob at the door to the laboratory.
“It’s—sir, they’re—”
“Well,” I said, “whose side are they on? What do they want? We’re under siege,
is that it? Is it the Republic?”
She shut the door behind herself, and leant against it. She did not put her pistol away. I think I had sounded too hopeful and made her wary of me.
“No,” she said. “It’s— sir, they’re nobody.”
“They can’t be nobody,” I said. “If nobody were assaulting the laboratory it wouldn’t be newsworthy. Do you mean you don’t know?”
“They’re just— people from Harrow Cross. Workers. Men and women of the Line. I’ve never— I’ve never seen anything like it. Not here.”
I stood. I was still walking with the aid of my self-made walking-stick. I packed up the plans and some other papers in my briefcase, and I stood beside the adjutant at the door. The poor woman looked quite lost. I had never seen her that way before, and for the first time I felt a certain fellow-feeling for her, and I regretted that I did not know her name.
I put my ear against the door and imagined that somewhere over the constant din of Harrow Cross I could hear angry shouting.
“Numbers,” I said.
“A hundred or more.”
“Do they know where I am?”
My apartment was just a short walk from the laboratory.
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” I said. “Well then. What do they want? To smash the Apparatus or steal it or— what?”
She thought for a moment. “Smash it, sir.”
“They wouldn’t be the first. What’s their particular objection?”
“They say— sir, I shouldn’t tell you this— shit, sir— the Harrow Cross Engine has not returned from the front. It’s been a week. I don’t know— its location is unknown, sir.”