The Half-Made World

by Felix Gilman

  He held up a finger as if to indicate that he’d heard her question, but didn’t answer. His peculiar eyes darted all round the clearing. His finger shook.

  “My mother is Dr. Hoffman. She’s one of the Professors here. In fact, she’s very senior. Are you a student?”

  The strange young man started a little at that name. “In my dreams,” he says, his pale brow furrowed, “I’ve seen this tree. And this water. This clearing.”

  “I don’t think that’s very likely. I’m sure you’ve never been here before; only I come here.

  “It’s very lovely. It’s very calm. I wish . . .”

  He went silent and lowered his finger.

  “My mother says that no one really sees things in dreams. They only think they do. She says it makes them think they’re being spoken to by the universe. As if they’re special. If they’re weak-minded. Do you often think you see things in dreams?”

  He focused on her for the first time. “In my dream, you’re weren’t here. There was no little girl in my dreams.”

  “But I am here. Do you see? This isn’t a place from your dreams. I really rather prefer to be alone here, actually.”

  He blinked at her.

  “Are you someone’s subject? If so, you shouldn’t be here anyway.”

  He stepped closer to the water. His suit was stained, Liv noticed, spattered with something dark. Many of the subjects—which was, she was increasingly sure, what this poor young man must be—were prone to stains. They could not take care of themselves.

  He looked back from the water to her. He studied her, up and down. There was something damp and despairing in his eyes.

  “Aren’t you scared of me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Most people are scared of me.” The rising edge of panic in his voice was familiar; she realized that he was the subject who’d been talking to her mother that morning. “At least a little bit. Most people find me odd.”

  “You’re only not well. That’s all.”

  He started crying—slow trickles at first, then deep sobs, his throat working as if vomiting.

  Liv had a handkerchief, lace-edged and monogrammed with her initials, in her pocket. She wondered whether to offer it.

  There was a crashing sound again in the trees. Much louder than before. Suddenly there were shrill whistles blowing and the sounds of men shouting and calling.

  Fear flooded her. At first she didn’t know why, but then moments later, the shape of things became clear. And as the men burst out of the bushes, the old men, their bowlers left behind to reveal shiny sweating scalps scraped by the thorns of the wild garden—and some of the students with them, and a man in white stained overalls from the kitchens, clutching a wooden rod like a club—and as they called out, “He’s here! The bastard’s here! I’ve got him!”—and as they fell on the strange young man and wrestled him, still sobbing, into the mud—through all that noise and commotion, her heart beat so loud, she could hardly hear anything else.

  One of the old men approached her, his eyes red with tears, to tell her what she refused to hear, and she ran.

  She ran through the undergrowth and over the tangling roots. She ducked under sharp-thorned branches. She ran up the lawn. The lawn was full of people; the whole Academy had spilled out onto the grass, as they did for festivals or fire drills. They watched her go by like so many tall faceless statues. A few tried to reach out to hold her but she twisted past. She ran through the cloisters, the wet slap of her feet echoing on the cold stone, and into the corridors, through the chapel, through the lecture halls, through the General Library, up through the Experimental Facilities, up through the Rooms, whirlingly dizzyingly fast round the iron spiral staircase and up past the laboratory, where someone had blundered through and the jars were spilled, broken, the brain matter dead and ruined: and one of the old men finally caught her and held her by her shaking shoulders just outside her mother’s office, where for an instant, before the old man pulled her away and close to his dusty old chest, Liv saw her mother slumped loosely in her green leather armchair, her head lolling, blood soaking her chest and her shirt and her lap, a dark blot tangling sickly through her white hair, soaking the dome of her skull, the shape of which Liv had never thought she’d noticed—she’d never thought of her mother before now as a body—the skull now dented, a shape as unsettling and unfamiliar and pathetic as a missing tooth in one’s mouth.

  After that, the world stopped making sense to her. It became a place of meaningless shapes and broken forms, moving through empty spaces.

  When it became clear, after six months, that this condition was likely to persist, perhaps indefinitely, the Academy made arrangements for her. She was placed in an Institute in town, where she was given a clean white room, books, and a regular course of nerve tonic. Her neighbor was a harmless young man with a congenital deformation of the brain by the name of Maggfrid. She made a slow recovery. Books helped. After a while, she was strong enough again to keep a journal, which became a record of her progress toward health, which became a cold and precise examination of her condition, according to some of her father’s theories, and then according to some of her own theories. Eventually her doctors pronounced her recovered, an analysis with which she was happy to concur; in fact, not long after that, one of her doctors considered her sufficiently recovered that he thought it not inappropriate to introduce her to his friend Dr. Bernhardt Alverhuysen, Professor of Natural History, who was looking for a wife. Sometimes, though, she thought she hadn’t really begun to recover until shortly before the day Director Howell’s letter arrived, inviting her out West. Maybe not even then.

  CHAPTER 21

  WEAKNESS

  The water’s radiance faded, until there was barely enough light in the cave to see by. It grew cold. Liv stood up and looked around.

  The Director had left her alone. She hadn’t noticed him go.

  By the entrance to the cave, there was a bench with three gas lamps sitting on it, one of which worked. She went back along the tunnel alone.

  She felt the most extraordinary sense of relief. Her body felt light, hollowed out. Initially there were symptoms of mild euphoria, which made her heart beat faster and her hands flutter and a smile rush to her lips. It resembled the euphoria associated with her nerve tonic, or something postcoital. It quickly subsided, leaving only a steady calm joy, which she was unable to describe or compare to anything else she’d ever had the opportunity to experience.

  She’d spent two hours with the Spirit, and missed her morning appointments. She took lunch with Maggfrid, and in the afternoon she met with Daisy again, and she found herself trying to describe to them what the Spirit had done for her, but of course, they were both quite incapable of understanding.

  At one point in their session, Daisy suddenly reached out and hugged her, which was a new and possibly significant behavior.

  Her new condition lasted for two days. After that, shadows began to return. A patient’s flat and sweaty and pale face reminded her for an instant of that face, and then suddenly that old wound was back. It settled in comfortably, like a toad. Every other wound that followed from it was back, too. There was a fracture at the base of her being, and everything built on it was unsteady. She took her nerve tonic before bed and had nightmares anyway—worse, now, than ever before. . . .

  She saw the Director again in the morning.

  “Well, Doctor? Was it—?”

  “Too early to say, Director. It was certainly . . . interesting. Whether it was effective or not is another question. I think I need to return.”

  He smiled ruefully and gave her the keys.

  “I shall have to cancel my morning appointments.”

  He shrugged. “Of course. Daisy won’t mind, I’m sure.”

  She went down into the cave.

  She went back again two days later, and the day after that, and the day after that.

  The day after that, when she entered the Director’s office, she found him standing
by the window, with his hands folded behind his back and a distant and formal expression on his face.

  “No, Doctor. I’m terribly sorry, but I must say no.”

  She was utterly astonished.

  He seemed unable to prevent his formal expression from giving way to an apologetic smile, and after that, he unfolded and folded his hands again as if not sure what to do with them.

  She adopted a reasonable tone. “Director Howell, I have only just begun my study of this phenomenon. It’s never properly been examined or understood, as I’m sure you’d be the first to admit; why else would you bring me out here? Its risks. Its benefits. Its potential. Does it truly heal or only appear to—?”

  “Liv. Doctor. The answer remains: no. I shall have to be firm.”

  “Why?”

  “The Spirit’s strength is not unlimited, Doctor. That much we know; that much we do understand. It takes on too much. There is too much suffering in the world. Others need it. Our patients must be our first concern.”

  He steepled his short brown fingers under his chin and looked at her with concern. “Do you understand?”

  She paused.

  “Of course, Director. Of course I understand.”

  “Good. Oh, good.” Theatrically, he took the keys to the Spirit’s cave down from their hook on the wall, and locked them in his desk. He placed the keys to his desk in the pocket of his white linen jacket.

  One more of those regretful little smiles. It made her angry.

  “Frankly, Director, my observations so far lead me to conclude that this entire place, and this entire enterprise to which your father and you and hundreds of other unfortunate individuals have sacrificed yourselves, is entirely pointless and entirely abominable and quite probably quite mad.”

  His face fell. She turned and walked out, nearly bumping into Mr. John Cockle, who stood in the corridor just outside, cleaning a window.

  “All well, ma’am?”

  She didn’t bother to answer him.

  She went straight back to her office and administered to herself four drops of her nerve tonic. She fell asleep in her chair and dreamed of the House and its oppressive heaviness closing in on her, its dampness and must and sadness, and the dark warrens of alien Folk beneath, and the wild emptiness of the hills outside, and the War.

  That night Creedmoor slipped silently into the Director’s private quarters. In contrast to the neatness of his office and his public persona, his quarters were a slovenly chaotic mess, suggestive of some emotional distress, regarding which Creedmoor didn’t give a shit. He found the linen jacket slung over the back of a chair and took the keys from it.

  He entered the Director’s office through the open window, and unlocked the desk with the keys from the Director’s jacket. Inside was another set of keys, older and heavier and somehow more serious: the keys to the tunnels.

  He went down into the cave. He took no lantern; he needed no light to see by.

  —The paintings are Folk stuff.

  —It is one of their Spirits. Weak.

  —Strong enough.

  He came to the glittering pool and knelt by its waters. He ran his fingers through it and felt them tingle. It was warm. He flicked the water idly into the shadows.

  He leaned back against one of the painted rocks and contemplated his problem.

  —No violence! A terrible handicap for a man in my line of work.

  He stared into the pool’s light and it shone back blankly.

  At the corners of his vision, those red lines on the walls shimmered and slunk in the half light, half-seen, like the stripes of one of those sneaking jungle cats of the far East.

  —It is stupid, Creedmoor. Or it would have killed you already.

  —A creature of simple appetites.

  He considered lighting a cigarette; he thought better of it. Best to leave no trace.

  —It wallows in weakness and pain and suffering. It disgusts us, Creedmoor.

  —We made it out of our misery. Just as we made you out of our hate, and we made the enemy out of our fear.

  —Careful, Creedmoor.

  He touched the water again. Water dripped from the walls like rain, a sleepy gentle rhythm. Circular echoes spread out across the pool.

  —How do we kill it, do you suppose?

  —It is immortal spirit, Creedmoor. It cannot be killed.

  —Except by the General’s wonderful long-lost weapon, which can kill the enemy and can kill you and presumably this poor misbegotten thing, too.

  —Presumably.

  The water lapped at Creedmoor’s fingers.

  —It has limits. When I killed poor William at the gate, it was distracted.

  —You were lucky.

  —Can’t kill it. But I know how to get around it.

  —Yes. We know.

  —It feeds on pain. So what happens if we choke it?

  CHAPTER 22

  FORWARD CAMP AT KLOAN

  Lowry knocked back three of his gray bitter-tasting lozenges with a glass of water. They made him cough, and his eyes watered. He waited, clutching the edge of his desk with white knuckles, for the surge of energy that would kick his exhausted body into life again. He had not slept for—he didn’t recall how long. Ever, possibly. Too much to do. Only science and the will of the Engines kept him plodding forward.

  There it was. Yes.

  “Thernstrom. Drum. Nickel. Slate. To me.”

  He burst out of his tent into the blazing afternoon sun and the smoke and din and minutely ordered chaos of Kloan Forward Camp, which was gearing up for an assault.

  “Come on, come on. Time’s wasting. Act fast. No second thoughts or turning back. Come on.”

  He plunged into the crowds and they followed.

  Old Kloan was nearly gone now. Poor old Kloan, Lowry thought. Too late now. The Line had done to Kloan what it did wherever it touched.

  A city of tents surrounded Lowry, heavy, gray and black, squatting on Kloan’s remains. Black-clad soldiers emerged, formed into lines that pressed together into squares, rifles at the ready, gas masks dangling loosely round their necks, eyes forward. Lowry shoved through.

  “Yes. Yes. Drum? What the fuck’s wrong with these idiots.”

  Drum stopped to shout at a line of men who appeared uncertain where to go. Pick it up, pick it up, you idiots. Lowry pushed on.

  Over the last month, nearly a full division of the Line’s forces had moved in. They came from Kingstown, Angelus, Gloriana, Harrow Cross, Archway, elsewhere. They came grumbling and cursing, blinking in the sun. They were far from any familiar Stations, and they hated the big sky and the hot sun and the bare earth and the thin air, which lacked the texture of air into which the Engines had exhaled. So Kloan had been rebuilt for them. Tents; then a city of tents; then iron shacks; hastily erected iron hangars and vaults; smoking chimneys and forges and foundries. The Line was mobile. Industry could be brought in on the back of trucks, assembled in days. . . .

  An error. He stopped short, wheeled around.

  “Slate? Where are these men’s gas masks?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  A rank of Linesmen, maskless, looked dead ahead, avoiding Lowry’s furious red-eyed gaze.

  “Where the slagging fuck are their gas masks? Who’s to blame? Mr. Slate? Eh? They’ll die without masks. Serve ’em right. Take care of it, Mr. Slate.”

  He strode on, through slick oil puddles, past ranks of throbbing machinery. He didn’t even know what it was. He passed the Signal Corps tent, where several shiny new telegraph machines had recently arrived, just barely keeping pace with the new volume of communications.

  A Signalman emerged from the tent and came running up with a transcript in his hand. “Sir—Acting Conductor, sir—the woman has been talking to the target again. The device captured the conversation with better accuracy this time, sir, near twenty percent—”

  “The potential target, Signalman. Make no assumptions. Anything new?”

  “Unclear, sir, as you k
now he talks in nursery rhymes and we’re uncertain how to decode—”

  “No time now. Assault under way. Mr. Nickel, go with him.”

  Lowry and Thernstrom pushed on. Residents of old Kloan, under the eyes of Linesmen, loaded gleaming newly made gas rockets onto the back of trucks. Lowry nodded in approval. The Kloanites were looking pale and sickly now, they didn’t take well to the new air, but they were tolerably hard workers when properly directed.

  Lowry put his arm round the shoulder of a Kloanite boy.

  “Walk with me. The rest of you, get on with it.”

  Lowry pushed on through ranks of Linesmen who struggled under the weight of machine guns, two men each and one to hold the ammunition case. Their insignia said they were from Gloriana. They staggered to one side as he passed and lowered their heads in submission.

  “See that, boy? That’s good order, that is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The forces now at Lowry’s disposal had doubled since the day he’d taken Banks’s place. More had been promised. But the Enemy was active now in the South and in the East. Agents had destroyed tracks, fomented uprisings, poisoned, burned, committed acts of sabotage and terror. Good; the Enemy was afraid. It meant that Lowry’s reinforcements were delayed, but Lowry was willing to make do with what he had.

  So far, he had not been removed from command. No doubt he was being watched.

  There were cranes overhead. They lifted concrete walls off flat-bed trucks and slowly lowered them into place around Lowry and Thernstrom and the boy, like a city exploding in reverse. Lowry squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t have seen that in Old Kloan, would you? Wonderful, isn’t it? Progress.”

  He passed by a row of Linesmen bent over the innards of black motorcycles. His mood was much improved now, the bustle and fear and respect of his men had put him in good spirits, not to mention the chemicals were now having their full energizing effect. “Good work, that man. Well done. Will they be ready?”

  The Linesmen snapped to attention. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”