ALVIN JOURNEYMAN

by Orson Scott Card

  What am I doing wrong? Verily wondered.

  “All right, since it’s Mr. Smith’s neck that’s on the line, I’ll deny the prosecution’s motion and grant the defense motion to set up a blind test of a panel of Finders. Let’s add another day—we’ll meet on Friday to see if they can identify Arthur Stuart. As for putting Arthur in custody, I’ll ask the boy’s adopted father—is old Horace in the court today?”

  Horace stood up. “Here I am, sir,” he said.

  “You going to make my life difficult by hiding this boy, so I have to lock you up for the rest of your natural life for contempt of court? Or are you going to keep him in plain sight and bring him to court for that test?”

  “I’ll bring him,” said Horace. “He ain’t going nowheres as long as Alvin’s in jail, anyhow.”

  “Don’t get cute with me, Horace, I’m just warning you,” said the judge.

  “Got no intention of being cute, dammit,” murmured Horace as he sat back down.

  “Don’t curse in my courtroom, either, Mr. Guester, and don’t insult me by assuming that my grey hair means I’m deaf.” The judge rapped with his gavel. “Well, that does it for motions and—“

  “Your Honor,” said Verily.

  “That’s me,” said the judge. “What, you got another motion?”

  “I do,” said Verily.

  “There’s the matter of arguments on the motion to produce the plow,” offered Marty Laws helpfully.

  “Dammit,” muttered the judge.

  “I heard that, judge!” cried Horace Guester.

  “Bailiff, put Mr. Guester outside,” said the judge.

  They all waited while Horace Guester got up and hurried out of the courtroom.

  “What’s your new motion, Mr. Cooper?”

  “I respectfully request to know the position of Mr. Webster in this courtroom. He seems not to be an official of the county of Hatrack or the state of Hio.”

  “Ain’t you co-counsel or some other fool thing?” asked the judge of Daniel Webster.

  “I am,” said Webster.

  “Well, there you have it.”

  “Begging your pardon, Your Honor, but it seems plain to me that Mr. Webster’s fees are not being paid by the county. I respectfully request to know who is paying him, or if he is acting out of the goodness of his heart.”

  The judge leaned on his desk and cocked his headto look at Daniel Webster. “Now that you mention it, I do recall never seeing you represent anybody as wasn’t either very rich or very famous, Mr. Webster. I’d like to know myself who’s paying you.”

  “I’m here volunteering my services,” said Webster.

  “So if I put you under oath and ask you to tell me if your time and expenses here are or are not being paid by someone other than your own self, you would say that you are receiving no payment? Under oath?”

  Webster smiled faintly. “I’m on retainer, and so my expenses are paid, but not for this case specifically.”

  “Let me ask it another way. If you don’t want the bailiff to put you out with Mr. Guester, tell me who’s paying you.”

  “I am on retainer with the Property Rights Crusade, located at 44 Harrison Street in the city of Carthage in the state of Wobbish.” Webster smiled thinly.

  “Does that answer your respectful request, Mr. Cooper?” the judge asked.

  “It does, Your Honor.”

  “Then I’ll declare this—“

  “Your Honor!” cried Marty Laws. “The matter of possession of the plow.”

  “All right, Mr. Laws,” said the judge. “Time for brief arguments.”

  “It’s absurd for the defendant to remain in possession of the property in question, that’s all,” said Marty.

  “Since the defendant himself is in the custody of the county jail,” said Verily Cooper, “and the plow is in his possession, then, like his clothing and his pen and ink and paper and everything else in his possession, the plow is obviously in the custody of the county jail as well. The state’s motion is moot.”

  “How do we know that the defendant even has the plow?” asked Marty Laws. “Nobody’s seen it.”

  “That’s a point,” said the judge, looking at Verily.

  “Because of special properties of the plow,” said Verily, “the defendant feels it unwise to let it out of his sight. Nevertheless, if the state wishes to designate three officers of the court to see it...”

  “Let’s keep it simple,” said the judge. “Mr. Laws, Mr. Cooper, and I will go see this plow today, as soon as we finish here.”

  Verily noticed with pleasure that Daniel Webster flushed with anger as he realized he was not going to be treated as an equal and invited along. Webster tugged at Laws’ coat and then whispered in his ear.

  “Um, Your Honor,” said Laws.

  “What message are you delivering for Mr. Webster?” asked the judge.

  “We can’t exactly call me, you, and Mr. Cooper as witnesses, us being, um, what we are,” said Laws.

  “I thought the point of, this was to make sure the plow existed,” said the judge. “If you and me and Mr. Cooper see it, then I think we can fairly well assure everybody it exists.”

  “But in the trial, we’ll want people other than the defendant and Mr. Makepeace Smith to be able to testify about the plow.”

  “Plenty of time for worrying about that later. I’m sure we can get a few witnesses to see it by then, too. How many do you want?”

  Another whispered conference. “Eight will do fine,” said Laws.

  “You and Mr. Cooper get together in the next while and decide which eight people you’ll settle on as witnesses. In the meantime, the three of us will go visit Mr. Alvin Smith in prison and get an eyeful of this marvelous legendary mythical golden plow that has—how did you put it, Mr. Cooper?”

  “Special properties,” said Verily.

  “You Englishmen have such a fine way with words.”

  Once again, Verily could sense some kind of nastiness directed toward him from the judge. As before, he had no idea what he had done to provoke it.

  Still, the judge’s inexplicable annoyance aside, things had gone rather well.

  Unless, of course, the Millers had been all wrong and the Slave Finders could identify Arthur Stuart as the wanted runaway. Then there’d be problems. But... the nicest thing about this case was that if Verily performed quite badly, making it certain that Alvin would be hanged or Arthur Stuart returned to slavery, Alvin, being a Maker, could always just take the boy and go away; and not a soul could stop them if Alvin didn’t want to be stopped, or find them if Alvin didn’t want to be found.

  Still, Verily had no intention of doing badly. He intended to win spectacularly. He intended to clear Alvin’s name of all charges so the Maker would be free to teach him all that he wanted to know. And another, deeper motive, one which he did not try to hide from himself though he would never have admitted it to another: He wanted the Maker to respect him. He wanted Alvin Smith to look him in the eye and say, “Well done, friend.”

  That would be good. Verily Cooper wanted that good thing.

  Chapter 14 -- Witnesses

  All the time of waiting hadn’t been so bad, really. Nothing was happening in the jail, but Alvin didn’t mind being alone and doing nothing. It gave him thinking time. And thinking time was making time, he reckoned. Not like he used to do as a boy, making bug baskets out of pulled-up grass to keep the Unmaker back. But making things in his head. Trying to remember the Crystal City as he saw it in the waterspout with Tenskwa-Tawa. Trying to figure how such a place was made. Can’t teach folks how to make it if I don’t know what it is myself.

  Outside the jail he knew that the Unmaker was moving in the world, tearing down a little here, knocking over a little there, setting a wedge in every tiny crack it found. And there were always people searching for the Unmaker, for some awful destructive power outside themselves. Poor fools, they always thought that Destruction was merely destruction, they were using it and when they we
re done with it, they’d set to building. But you don’t build on a foundation of destruction. That’s the dark secret of the Unmaker, Alvin thought. Once he sets you to tearing down, it’s hard to get back to building, hard to get your own self back. The digger wears out the ground and the spade. And once you let yourself be a tool in the Unmaker’s hand, he’ll wear you out, he’ll tear you down, he’ll dull you and hole you and all the time you’ll be thinking you’re so sharp and fine and bright and whole, and you never know till he lets go of you, lets you drop and fall. What’s that clatter? Why, that was me. That was me, sounding like a wore-out tool. What you leaving me for? I still got use left in me!

  But you don’t, not when the Unmaker’s got you.

  What Alvin figured out was that when you’re Making, you don’t use people like tools. You don’t wear them out to achieve your purpose. You wear yourself out helping them achieve theirs. You wear yourself out teaching and guiding, persuading and listening to advice and letting folks persuade you, when it happens they’re right. So instead of one ruler and a bunch of wore-out tools, you got a whole city of Makers, all of them free fellow-citizens, hard workers every one...

  Except for one little problem. Alvin couldn’t teach Making. Oh, he could get people to sort of set their minds right and their work would be enhanced a little. And a few people, like Measure, mostly, and his sister Eleanor, they learned a thing or two, they caught a glimmer. But most was in the dark.

  And then there comes a one like this lawyer from England, this Verily Cooper, and he was just born knowing how to do in a second what Measure could only do after a whole day’s struggle. Sealing a book shut like it was a single block of wood and cloth, and then opening it again with no harm to any of the pages and the letters still stuck on the surfaces. That was some Making.

  What did he have to teach Verily? He was born knowing. And how could he hope to teach those as wasn’t born knowing? And anyway how could he teach anything when he didn’t know how to make the crystal out of which the city would be made?

  You can’t build a city of glass; it’ll break, it can’t hold weight. You can’t build out of ice, either, because it ain’t clear enough and what about summer? Diamonds, they’re strong enough, but a city made of diamond, even if he could find or make so much of it—no way would they be allowed to use such rich stuff for building, there’d be folks to tear it down in no time, each one stealing a bit of wall to make hisself rich, and pretty soon the whole thing would be like a Swiss cheese, more hole than wall.

  Oh, Alvin could spin himself through these thoughts and wonderings, through memories and words of books he read when Miss Larner—when Peggy—was teaching him. He could keep his mind occupied in solitude and not mind it a bit, though he also sure didn’t mind when Arthur Stuart came to talk to him about goings on.

  Today, though, things were happening. Verily Cooper would be fending off motions for this and that, and even if he was a good lawyer, he was from England and he didn’t know the ways here, he could make mistakes, but there wasn’t a blame thing Alvin could do about it even if he did. He just had to put his trust in other folks and Alvin hated that.

  “Everyone hates it,” said a voice, a so-familiar voice, a dreamed-of, longed-for voice with which he had had many a debate in his memory, many a quarrel in his imagination; a voice that he dreamed of whispering gently to him in the night and in the morning.

  “Peggy,” he whispered. He opened his eyes.

  There she was, looking just as she would if he had conjured her up, only she was real, he hadn’t done no conjuring.

  He remembered his manners and stood up. “Miss Larner,” he said. “It was kind of you to come and visit me.”

  “Not so much kind as necessary,” she said, her tone businesslike.

  Businesslike. He sighed inwardly.

  She looked around for a chair.

  He picked up the stool that stood inside the cell and impulsively, thoughtlessly handed it right through the bars to her.

  He hardly even noticed how he made the bits of iron bar and the strands of woodstuff move apart to let each other through; only when he saw Peggy’s wide, wide eyes did he realize that of course she’d never seen anybody pass wood and iron right through each other like that.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve never done that before, I mean without warning or nothing.”

  She took the stool. “It was very thoughtful of you,” she said. “To provide me with a stool.”

  He sat down on his cot. It creaked under him. If he hadn’t toughened up the material, it would have given way under his weight days ago. He was a big man and he used furniture kind of rough; he didn’t mind if it complained out loud now and then.

  “They’re doing pretrial motions in court today, I understand.”

  “I watched part of it. Your lawyer is excellent. Verily Cooper?”

  “I think he and I ought to be friends,” Alvin said. He watched for her reaction.

  She nodded, smiled thinly. “Do you really want me to tell you what I know about the possible courses your friendship might take?”

  Alvin sighed. “I do, and I don’t, and you know it.”

  “I’ll tell you that I’m glad he’s here. Without him you’d have no chance of getting through this trial.”

  “So now I’ll win?”

  “Winning isn’t everything, Alvin.”

  “But losing is nothing.”

  “If you lost the case but kept your life and your life’s work, then losing would be better than winning, and dying for it, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not on trial for my life!”

  “Yes you are,” said Peggy. “Whenever the law gets its hands on you, those who use the law to their own advantage will also turn it against you. Don’t put your trust in the laws of men, Alvin. They were designed by strong men to improve their power over weaker ones.”

  “That’s not fair, Miss Larner,” said Alvin. “Ben Franklin and them others as made the first laws—“

  “They meant well. But the reality for you is that whenever you put yourself in jail, Alvin, your life is in grave danger every moment.”

  “You came to tell me that? You know I can walk out of here whenever I want.”

  “I came so I could tell you when to walk away, if the need comes.”

  “I want my name cleared of Makepeace’s lies.”

  “I also came to help with that,” she said. “I’m going to testify.”

  Alvin thought of that night when Goody Guester died, Peggy’s mother, though he hadn’t known that Miss Larner was really Peggy Guester until she knelt weeping over her mother’s ruined body. Right till the moment they heard the first gunshot, he and Peggy had been on the verge of declaring their love for each other and deciding to marry. And then her mother killed the Finder, and the other Finder killed her, and Alvin got there way too late to heal her from the shotgun blast, and all he could do was kill the man that shot her, kill him with his bare hands, and what did that do? What good did that do? What kind of Making was that?

  “I don’t want you to testify,” he said.

  “I wasn’t looking forward to it myself,” she said. “I won’t do it if it’s not needed. But you have to tell Verily Cooper what and who I am, and tell him that when he’s all done with his other witnesses, he’s to look to me, and if I nod, he’s to call me as a witness, no arguments. Do you understand me? I’ll know better than either of you whether my testimony is necessary or not.”

  Alvin heard what she said and knew he’d go along, but there was a part of him that was seething with anger even though he didn’t know why—he’d been longing to see her for more than a year now, and suddenly she was here and all he wanted to do was yell at her.

  Well, he didn’t yell. But he did speak up in a voice that sounded less than kind. “Is that what you come back for? To tell poor stupid Alvin and his poor stupid lawyer what to do?”

  She looked sharp at him. “I met an old friend of yours at the ferry.”


  For a moment his heart leapt within him. “Ta-Kumsaw?” he whispered.

  “Goodness no,” she said. “He’s out west past the Mizzipy for all I know. I was referring to a fellow who once had a tattoo on an unmentionable part of his body, a Mr. Mike Fink.”

  Alvin rolled his eyes. “I guess the Unmaker’s assembling all my enemies in one place.”

  “On the contrary,” said Peggy. “I think he’s no enemy. I think he’s a friend. He swears he means only to protect you, and I believe him.”

  He knew she meant him to take that as proof that the man could be trusted, but he was feeling stubborn and said nothing.

  “He came to the Wheelwright ferry in order to be close enough to keep an eye on you. There’s a conspiracy to get you extradited to Kenituck under the Fugitive Slave Law.”

  “Po Doggly told me he wasn’t going to pay no mind to that.”

  “Well, Daniel Webster is here precisely to see to it that whether you win or lose here, you get taken to Kenituck to stand trial.”

  “I won’t go,” said Alvin. “They’d never let me get to trial.”

  “No, they never would. That’s what Mike Fink came to watch out for.”

  “Why is he on my side? I took away his hex of protection. It was a strong one. Near perfect.”

  “And he’s suffered a few scars and lost an ear since then. But he’s also learned compassion. He values the exchange. And you healed his legs. You left him with a fighting chance.”

  Alvin thought about that. “Well, you never know, do you. I thought of him as a stone killer.”

  “I think that a good person can sometimes do wrong out of ignorance or weakness or wrong thinking, but when hard times come, the goodness wins out after all. And a bad person can often seem good and trustworthy for a long time, but when hard times come, the evil in him gets revealed.”

  “So maybe we’re just waiting for hard enough times to come in order to find out just how bad I am.”

  She smiled thinly. “Modesty is a virtue, but I know you too well to think for a minute you believe you’re a bad man.”

  “I don’t think much about whether I’m good or bad. I think a lot about whether I’m going to be worth a damn or not. Right now I reckon myself to be worth about six bits.”