Part 26 (1/2)

The Ransom Project was moved, for safety, and under conditions of extreme secrecy, to a new location- another hangar, on a different rooftop.

We were located directly above the Kingstown Engine itself, and though there was a tall building between us and the depths the Engine hid in, and sometimes you could feel the floor vibrate, as if the thing was s.h.i.+fting in uneasy dreams. I complained- it was bad for the Apparatus. I was ignored.

The adjutant was rea.s.signed for the sake of her mental health and I never did learn her name. There were a whole lot of new guards outside the new hangar and my new quarters. They were grim and loyal-looking Linesmen, hand-picked. A new adjutant appeared. This one was also a woman, younger than the last one, red-haired and freckle-faced, pretty but stern and zealous. She informed me that she had personally requested to work with me, in light of the critical situation in the inner Territories and the need for urgent progress. A number of my engineers were transferred away and I was left only with the most loyal and the most ambitious. And yet I had not been in my new quarters a week before somebody left a note for me, poking out beneath the edge of the triplicate typewriter.

H. It's me. They transferred me back to HC. But while I was out I made contact with the Republic. They can get us out. They can get us out together. They want you and your Process. It must be together. This is our moment. Send back word.

CHAPTER 32.

HOW I GOT OUT.

Is it you? Adela, is that you? I thought I'd never hear from you again. Where have you been? I heard you were lost en route to Archway. I feared you were dead. I hoped you'd escaped.

Will you come? There's little time. Are you with us?

I'm with you, Adela. I care nothing for the Republic or the Line or the Gun or anything else. How do I know you're really yourself?

Will you make me repeat all those words of love? I'll write them again. Will you make talk about music- that stupid piano you loved so much? The Republic's forces will be at the walls soon- we don't have time for games. Will you come?

Yes. Tell me what to do.

That exchange lasted maybe two weeks. I have cut it short, because I am in a hurry now.

The young and freckle-faced new adjutant knocked on the door of my quarters. I let her in.

”I'm working,” I said. ”I'm always working.”

She sat on the bed. She removed her cap and placed it in her lap. ”Sir,” she said.

I stood by my writing-desk. By that time I no longer needed my stick to walk but I liked to lean on it anyhow. I felt it gave me a kind of authority. When I was a boy I had imagined the dignitaries of Jasper City, Mr. Baxter and the Senators and all those great men whose number I would one day join, all of them with sticks. I cannot say why.

”Another riot?” I said. ”If you can't keep control of your people here in Harrow Cross then the War is over and our efforts here are futile.”

”Sir,” she repeated.

”Yes?”

”I pulled strings, sir, to work with you. I distinguished myself at Chatillon. I proved my loyalty.”

”I don't doubt it.”

”It's all falling apart, sir. I saw the test at Log-Town with my own eyes. I was in the Second Company of the Second Army of the Archway Engine. I saw the walls of Log-Town-I was a long-rifleman, sir. I was there when- that light, sir. Those shapes. What was left behind afterwards. It spilled- not many from Second Company survived, sir.”

”I'm sorry.”

”Don't be, sir. It opened my eyes.”

She leaned forward as she spoke, and her eyes were fixed on mine and full of a kind of frightening zeal.

”I heard all those stories about- and I heard about the Miracle at White Rock- and I didn't believe. The Engines said it was all lies. Nothing was new, nothing had changed. But it was true.”

”Some of it was true.”

”I believed in the Engines. I believed in them with all my heart, all my life, sir. I wanted nothing more than to serve them. But they're just- things, aren't they, sir? Just things after all. The Archway Engine's gone, sir. The Cross Engine's gone. How long before they all go? Just- history, sir. They lied to me.”

I did not know who she meant by They. The Engines, I guess, or maybe everyone. I said nothing, just nodded.

”It's a new century,” she said.

By the reckoning of most people we were still a few years off from the new century, but the Line has its own calendar. We count from a date of what I guess must be some kind of significance in the religions or history of one of the countries of the Old World but I cannot even tell you which country, and I do not believe I am alone in my ignorance. The men of the Line do not suffer from that kind of confusion. They count from the day the Engines spoke their first order. For them it was the Year 300, and it had been for quite a few months. There had been no celebrations.

”We can make a new world,” she said.

”Yes,” I said.

”There are people here in Harrow Cross who are working for the Republic, sir. Their armies will be here within the week. The Engines are too scared to fight back. They're scared. We'll get you out, sir, you and your Bomb- don't worry- but you must help us too.”

”Adela,” I said. ”You've seen her? You've talked to her?”

She nodded, stood, and put her cap back on.

”We communicated through channels, sir. Sir- the Republic must have your B- your Apparatus.”

”I see. That's their price?”

”Yes, sir. If you want to call it that.”

”Then I guess I have work to do, don't I?”

I do not have time to describe everything I did in the next week, and if I did have time you would not understand it, and if you did understand it you would be tempted to repeat it. All I'll say is that I worked in my laboratory without sleep for days on end.

I chased away the engineers- I was forced to strike one of them with my stick- I shall not deny that it gave me great satisfaction. He lodged a complaint. I did not give a d.a.m.n.

”No wonder this thing hasn't worked,” I said. ”It's my d.a.m.n fault it took me so long to understand it. It's you- it's your small minds, your lack of vision- It's a delicate process, the Process, it's as much magic as science- let us not delude ourselves, ladies and gentlemen- and your small-minded mean-spirited unbelieving presence is poison to it. Anathema. We are making new worlds and the end of old worlds. We don't need paper-pushers. We don't need anyone but me. Get out, the lot of you.”

The adjutant enforced my orders. The engineers complained to higher authorities but the higher authorities had more immediate concerns, namely that the forces of the Republic, swelled by the vehicles and guns of Gloriana and Archway, had clashed with loyalist Line forces in the Stow marshlands not that many miles south of Harrow Cross itself, and the result was so far a stalemate. The Line was not accustomed to stalemate.

I worked day and night. I did not leave the laboratory. I slept hardly at all, ate next to nothing, drank less than I sweated. To make this possible I took one h.e.l.l of a lot of those chemical tablets that the Linesmen love so much, the ones that can make you work for days without sleep but also make you grind your teeth and twitch your leg. They give you a wonderful cold sharp focus on your work but leave you numb and dazed so that you do not notice when someone is talking to you, and when you try to talk back your words are slow. Sometimes they fill you full of sudden rage or tears. After a long enough time they make you see and hear things that cannot be the case.

I had exiled the engineers from the laboratory, and I had told the adjutant not to bother me with anything but the most urgent news, but I could not banish the phantoms that the Process produces.

Back when I first met the phantom I called Jasper, down in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Ormolu Theater, I had thought of him as a real person- a man not unlike myself, conjured into being by the Process and silent and p.r.o.ne to vanis.h.i.+ng but still a man. In later years I had seen the phenomenon repeated a thousand times over, and in all that time not a single one of them ever spoke, or communicated through sign, or even looked me in the eye. I had come to think of them as a kind of shadow, cast by the light of the Process. It operates by cycling power between one world and another- one time and another- one state of being and another- it drags some things with it. If they were people at all, they were people who had once existed in a very different time, or who might have existed in a different world, or who one day might exist- even if they could speak, I would not understand them. And they could not speak.

So perhaps it was the Line's drugs that caused me to believe that one night, while I was working on the Apparatus by the light of the Apparatus, I was visited by Mr. Carver, and he spoke to me.