Part 25 (2/2)

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 h.e.l.l 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. a.r.s.enal, 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 d.a.m.ned son of a b.i.t.c.h, 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 bemus.e.m.e.nt 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 n.o.body.”

”They can't be n.o.body,” I said. ”If n.o.body were a.s.saulting 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- s.h.i.+t, 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.”

”n.o.body told me.”

”It's not publicized, sir. But it gets out regardless.”

”I don't see how I'm to blame, or my Apparatus.”

”They've heard things, sir- the Bomb to end the world, the Bomb that kills the Powers- they hear about the tests that go wrong- they hear about the- the things you call the phantoms- they're frightened, sir, and confused. Things are changing and they don't know what to do. I never thought I'd see it in Harrow Cross. I've lived here forty-five years sir and I've never seen anything like it.”

”Well then. Well. I suggest we run.”

”Run?”

”It offends your pride? Not mine. I don't have much pride left and I never did mind running.”

I opened the door. She did not stop me.

The corridor outside was empty.

She followed me along two turns of the corridor to the elevator.

I said, ”What is your name, anyhow?”

She didn't answer.

The elevator took us down to the rooftop. Its doors opened onto a broad expanse of concrete. In the red-gray perpetual half-light of Harrow Cross at night you could see the hangar that housed the laboratory, its tall locked gates. Outside the gates there was a crowd.

As a matter of fact I would say that there were at most a couple of dozen men and women. By the standards of Jasper City or the Western Rim it was not much of a mob. Many of them were in uniform. They were milling uncertainly- it was very strange to see people in Harrow Cross who did not know what they were supposed to do or where they were supposed to go.

Not much of a mob. But they had a good try at chasing us down anyhow, until the adjutant started shooting at them and then with a thunderous noise a half-dozen Vessels converged overhead. The wind of their blades whipped the cap off the adjutant's head and blew her gray hair wild. The wind knocked the mob off their feet. Their spotlights marked a clear white line across which the mob did not dare step.

Among the mob were a number of the silent phantoms conjured by the Process- fierce Folk with stone spears, soldiers of Jasper City with bayonets, women in pioneer bonnets and tear-streaked faces- the wind didn't touch them, the spotlights didn't scare them, and when the rest of the mob fell back they kept on running. The adjutant shot at them until her gun was empty and she fell to her knees on the concrete and they kept running. They ran right past us- when I turned to see where they'd gone it seemed they'd vanished.

The mob had their hands in the air. So did I. The adjutant was weeping. I lowered one hand very slowly to her shoulder to console her.

It was true. The Harrow Cross Engine never did return from the front. After a few weeks the Kingstown Engine took its place. It moved out of Kingstown for reasons of safety and it traveled north to Metzinger. The tracks west out of Metzinger were broken and so was the route north. It moved itself into Dryden and then out of Dryden. All the Engines seemed to be moving themselves about like chess-pieces, each one in its own mind a king, as their enemies cut their lines and trapped them- well, somehow it was the Kingstown Engine that ended up in Harrow Cross. It inserted itself into the deepest darkest parts of the Station and it issued a torrent of orders and threats and it did not emerge into the light ever again.

There were rumors that the armies of the Republic, swelled by the men of the rebellious Stations of Archway and Gloriana, were approaching Harrow Cross itself.

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