Pathspace
Page 65
Chapter 65
Peter: “Lying down in the melting snow.”
Quintus squinted up at him from the depression in the floor where the listening post for the maglev rails from Shreveport and Jackson was situated. “No further messages from Dixie since the last time you asked,” he said. “I've kept the listening rota up, but something or someone must be interfering with your operatives on the other end.”
“Well, keep at it,” the Honcho directed, knowing it was unnecessary but wanting to give some reply to the man. “Unless they've been caught, they ought to check in presently when their transmission window recurs.”
He turned to the stairs and wondered if he should return to his roost above, or call it a day and head back to his estate by the lake. It had been a long day. Perhaps it would be better to leave off planning until he was rested. If the pasha of the Dixie Emirates had, in fact, penetrated the disguises of his agents, there was nothing he could do about it except select replacements and hope they had their worldly affairs in order.
A distant pounding reached him. Someone must be tearing down the staircase above him on a mission of urgency. Tiredly, he wondered absently what could be so important this late in the day. He couldn't imagine it was that crucial, whatever it was, and so instead of exerting himself to intercept the other he merely climbed to the street level and waited.
Jeffrey nearly fell down the last flight of stairs in his haste. “They're marching on the prison! I saw it when I went up to see if there was any news from the heliograph.”
Peter had nearly forgotten about the backup messaging system, obsessed as he had been with the information coming in from the rail bangers. Both media used the long and short pauses of Samuel F. B. Morse. The value of his code was that anything that could be sensed at a distance could carry information by merely interrupting it rhythmically.
Visual line-of sight communication was a much older art. From ancient times tribes on many continents had used smoke and beacon fires to “sound” alarms of invasion. But fires were less articulate than hand operated mirrors. The Greeks had used polished shields to do their sun-signaling in 405 BC. The Roman emperor Tiberius was said to have used a heliograph to communicate with the mainland when he ruled his empire from the Isle of Capri in 35 AD. Napoleon's empire used a different optical telegraphy system devised by Claude Chappe consisting of semaphore towers with rotating arms to send information even on cloudy days.
The street outside the front doors of the building had fallen dark, but even at this hour messages could still be sent to the roof for a bit longer. Such signals could be sent also at night, of course, but torches and lamps were a poor substitute for the Sun, plus their fires had to be confined in all other directions lest the signal be overheard.
“Did you hear what I said? People with torches are converging on the prison.”
That explained how he had spotted them so easily in the gloom of evening. “Sounds like Ricky's decided not to wait any longer,” he said. “How far off are they?”
“Only a few blocks by now,” said the Runt. “But I saw no signs of a ram. If we move quickly we ought to get there before they work up to bashing the doors down.”
“How many has he got?”
“Looks like at least a hundred.”
There was no time to call for the Imperial coach to be harnessed, so he sent Jeffrey to fetch some soldiers and a couple of horses for them. While he waited he thought about what they were getting into. Is this a feint, to draw me out and sick the crowd on me? No, he'd never be that stupid. It would be civil war. But he went to the armory and snatched a couple of crossbows for him and Jeffrey anyway, trying not to think about the obvious: one or more of those torch-bearers could be hiding a swizzle-gun.