by Felix Gilman
Only a short detour was necessary to bring the rider within Marmion’s prodigious range—and Creedmoor didn’t miss. He never missed.
A crack. The rider silently tumbled into the dust.
Creedmoor shook his head.
—Damn fool. Should have stayed home where they needed him.
—The Line knows we are here. Get to work, Creedmoor.
Creedmoor began to scour the trails and back roads of the hills. Twenty-four hours later, he picked up the trail of a procession—he could smell them—a dozen men and women, on foot, slow moving, some of them wounded, scents of pus and bandages and iodine.
—The House’s men. And the walking wounded. A harvest of the sick and the mad for the House Dolorous.
—Yes. They will suffice. Finally we can begin. Faster, Creedmoor.
CHAPTER 10
GLORIANA
To enter the Gloriana Station was to leave the ordinary world behind. It was to enter into a world of noise and din and stink, in which even the light was different—because there was no real sunlight in the Station, only the cold glare of spotlights and the glimmer of industrial fires, and those few shafts of natural light that crept through the filthy windows and the dust-laden air were altered by their passage, stripped to the bone. To descend the broad black iron staircase onto the Concourse was to enter the bowels of the earth; to walk out onto the white stone of the Concourse itself, beneath the high arched roof and the sweeping acetylene searchlights, was like walking on the moon. Liv held tight to Maggfrid’s arm, and breathed deeply, and clutched her ticket in her hand, and came into the presence of the Gloriana Engine. . . .
Gloriana was the most extraordinary structure she had ever seen. It dominated the horizon like a mountain; she rode into its shadow.
The Station itself was perhaps four or five times taller than the highest part of the Academy. Low sheds and warehouses sprawled to left and right, a mess of tin and concrete and wire. Pistons and windmill-sized gears rose out of the rubble. Chimney stacks vented. Gray blocky towers, some windowless and others bristling with blank eyes, buttressed the Station, whose black iron arches soared up at severe angles, forming distant peaks. It reminded Liv of a cathedral; it also reminded her of the vultures she’d seen here and there by the roadside, squatting inside the ugly arch of their shoulders.
It moved. From a distance it appeared to be rippling. Only when she came closer did it become apparent that the structure was covered in cranes, which swung monotonously back and forth from tower to tower, and in gears and cable cars and elevators and . . .
Behind Gloriana Station was the town in which the Engine’s servants lived—a hive, a maze of shafts and towers. The populations of Burren Hill and Monroe and Barrett and Conant together couldn’t have filled half of it.
The whole black mass sat on the open grasslands, roaring and smoking, casting a jagged sundial-shadow over the plains. It appeared to have been placed at random, or dropped from the heavens. Something about it suggested a vast indifference to the natural world. On all sides of it, as Liv approached, there were blue skies; only the Station itself was wreathed in smoke.
Gloriana was the northeasternmost endpoint of the continent-spanning network of the Line. Only one track left it—behind the Station, leaving high overhead on a raised iron bridge, and disappearing into the hills.
There were thirty-eight immortal Engines in the world. The Line bound them together—a great continent-spanning nervous system. Each Engine had its own Station, and its own anonymous masses of men and machines. Every few decades another was born—another demon risen from the earth to settle into a body of iron and coal. Gloriana was one of the smallest of the Stations, and the Gloriana Engine was one of the younger of its kind.
To approach the Station—to approach the Station was to queue. For hours.
Liv and Maggfrid had walked south from Conant in the company of a local guide. A half day out from the Station, they had come upon the road. It was black, and wide, and straight, and the rolling grasslands appeared to have been flattened for it. They weren’t alone on it. As they got closer to the Station, the road got more and more crowded. There were pedestrians like themselves, some carrying baskets of goods on their backs. There were horsemen and carts. And every so often, there was a great coarse honking sound, and the roar of motors, and a staff car or troop truck would come barreling down the road, stuffed with pale Linesmen in their black uniforms, bristling with rifles and bayonets, and every time Liv had to pull Maggfrid aside, because his instinct was to stand squarely in the road and not be moved.
And in the shadow of the Station itself there were crowds—shifting masses of men—and a number of roads led up to the Station’s various gates. Little men shouted and directed traffic. That way! You, that way! Liv stumbled along with the crowd and pulled Maggfrid with her. She found herself in a long line, the distant end of which slowly moved through an arched gate in the south wall of the Station. She asked, “What are we—?” and the man in front of her answered with a grunt and a shrug. Someone pressed a ticket with a number on it into her hand. She said, “Excuse me . . . ,” and was shushed, angrily. She’d never been in the presence of so many people, and it threw her badly off balance; she felt almost physically compelled to follow the slow-moving line ahead of her. She kept quiet and looked at her feet. The queue lasted for what felt like hours. When she got to the front of the Line and the clerk in the gate’s little booth questioned her about her purpose, and her identity, and her intentions, in the rudest possible manner, she was too cowed to answer back. Only once she’d been fed through into the interior of the Station was she able to stagger into a somewhat empty corridor and turn to Maggfrid and whisper, “These are the most awful people.” But Maggfrid’s face was flat with terror. . . .
The noise! Inside the Station there was a constant din of machinery. The roar of vast furnaces, the clatter of intricate clockwork. No wonder the Linesmen looked so pale and haunted! No wonder their eyes were so dull! After an hour, the noise was enough to drive Liv to tears—it did drive Maggfrid to tears. She was unsure of the long-term psychological effects, but she had no doubt they were unhealthy.
The Linesmen were gray-faced and short. They looked poorly nourished. They surged through the corridors as if they were themselves parts of the great machine, moving to the beat of the omnipresent clocks. Their ugly voices echoed from loudspeakers. They jostled and scowled and swore. They had no manners; they were too busy for manners.
Her golden watch worked erratically. She suspected it was the noise, and the grit in the air, and the constant shaking of the machines. Koenigswald’s ornate and fragile workmanship was simply overwhelmed by the Line’s monstrous operations. What did it do to the mind? What did it do to the soul?
Everything smelled of coal and oil and smoke. There was nothing natural in the Station, except the occasional rat. It was an ecology of machines. Somewhere at the heart of the structure, the Gloriana Engine lived, and its mechanical dreams shaped the world around it.
The signs confused her, but eventually she found her way to the Ticketing Facility, where she was directed into a low-ceilinged dark room, lined with wooden benches and lit by whispering electricity. She sat and waited among her fellow passengers-to-be. An old woman wept silently, surrounded by black leather cases. A young couple clutched each other’s hands and stared at the floor. Three fat nuns in the white of their religious order bowed their heads in prayer. Four bored Linesmen stared into space. The tick of a tall clock like a coffin filled the room and suppressed conversation.
An hour passed. Then there was another long and humiliating process of checking and double- and triple-checking of tickets and identification and questioning as to her business. Her questioners never looked her in the eye; they made constant scratching notes on their clipboards and they spoke in a bored contemptuous monotone. They read over and over the promissory note from the Academy that was her payment for the journey. She was not accustomed to being spoken to in su
ch a manner. She swallowed her tongue; she could not stop her cheeks from flushing.
Each one of the men had gray dull eyes. They had a sort of shuddering glowing device like a—Liv wasn’t sure what to compare it to—like a mangle?—a device with which they somehow reproduced gritty mirror images of all her papers. One copy was placed with some ceremony into a vacuum tube, and with a thump it ascended into the upper reaches of the machine. The rest of the copies the Linesmen indifferently stuffed into various cabinets and wire trays. One of them shoved a ticket into her hand and said, “Three days. Come back in three days. Nineteen hours. Don’t be late.”
The Gloriana Hotel occupied six floors of the south face of the Station. From the outside, it was a concrete box. The interior, to Liv’s surprise, was luxurious to the point of excess. Every surface groaned with food and drink—every corner was stuffed with sculptures—the walls were lush with paintings and tapestries and bronze and oak. A legion of servants whisked sheets away every hour, it seemed, and electric lights blazed ceaselessly. Humming electric fans cleaned the stench of industry from the air, and warmed and cooled the rooms. The only thing they couldn’t keep out was the noise, which had Liv clutching her head and reaching for her sleeping tincture at night.
By day, Liv went out into the town, or at least she tried to; checkpoints turned her back, and half the corridors were sealed behind iron gates. Gloriana was secretive. But she saw enough to know that the Linesmen lived like rats in their tunnels, in squalor and privation, ruled by the clock and the bell and the loudspeaker. The Hotel’s luxury was for show, for outsiders, for the travelers who were only passing through. Was it meant to seduce? Liv took it as a threat—it said, Look how much our factories can make, and how easily. We could buy you. . . .
“It starts to feel oppressive. Don’t you agree?”
The fat white-robed women had turned out to be Abbesses of the White City Virgins. They were surprisingly worldly women. They went back and forth by Line annually on the business of their religion, and were no strangers to Gloriana. Liv met them in the hotel’s oak-paneled lobby, under the great swaying chandelier. They leaned in and whispered, “The smell . . . wait till you try to get the smell out of your clothes.”
“I can live with the smell,” Liv said. “The noise is another matter.”
“Wait until you see the Engine itself, dear. Try not to be afraid—remember, the journey won’t be long. Where are you going?”
“To work in a hospital.”
“God’s work, my dear. God’s work. Where are you going?”
“The House Dolorous, near—”
“Yes.” The nuns shook their heads. “It’s well known. They say there’s a demon there, watching over it. You must be careful to remember that the demons of this land are not God.”
“Here it seems they worship their Engines.”
“They do.”
“I can’t say I like it. I feel like they’re watching me, Sister. There’s always someone looking, wherever I go.”
“They are watching. They’re always watching, my dear. You just have to get used to that. There’s a file on every passenger. Everything in its place. Fortunately, they don’t care very much about people. Try to be harmless.”
“I’m a doctor. What could be more harmless? But they treat everyone here like criminals. They won’t stop asking me where I’m going, what I’m doing, who I am, why I’m going, as if every word I say is a lie.”
“Well, you’re a long way from home. Why are you here, Doctor, if you don’t mind my asking?”
On top of the usual din of motorcars and cranes, there was the sound of the crowd shouting outside, and the loudspeakers in the corridors were blaring news of a victory against the Gun in the Delta Baronies, and Liv couldn’t think. She simply couldn’t think of an answer to that question. The fat little nun kept blandly smiling, and Liv said, “Ah—”
The second nun tapped her on the shoulder. “Oh, my dear.” The nun pointed out through the hotel’s glass doors into the corridor. “Isn’t that your big manservant—looks like he’s in trouble.”
It was Maggfrid—he stood outside, surrounded by half a dozen Linesmen, and he was shouting as they shoved at him. Liv ran, heels clicking on the lobby floor. He shouldn’t have been out alone. He wasn’t able to understand why he had to answer questions or show his papers—and anyway, Liv thought, the Linesmen instinctively disliked him, huge and defective as he was. If it weren’t for the noise and her nerves, she wouldn’t have let him out of her sight.
Liv threw her weight against the slow-revolving doors. She called out, “Wait—stop, please, wait!” just as Maggfrid swung his fist and knocked a Linesman flying, and suddenly whistles were blowing and more black-uniformed men came running, dozens more.
CHAPTER 11
SUB-INVIGILATOR LOWRY INVESTIGATES: KLOAN, AFTER THE FIRE
Lowry watched the messages come in by telegraph from the undercover personnel in Greenbank, Kloan, Gooseneck, Fairsmith, and World’s End. Nothing of interest. He learned the details of every passing merchant or beggar. He learned about the comings and goings of the Hospital’s staff, who went out into the world and collected up the wounded, mad, and dying and led them back to the Hospital to rot, as if suffering were a valuable commodity or fuel to be gathered, or as if the Spirit in the Hospital was hungry. . . . But nothing useful. No signs of the enemy.
The Forward Camp waited, unsure how to act. Lowry heard rumors that Conductor Banks had written to the Hospital, making a formal demand that the forces of the Line be permitted full access, and had been told in no uncertain terms to drop dead. Lowry presented Banks with a formal memorandum, urging a full siege of the Hospital’s perimeter. Sub-Invigilator (First) Morningside opposed the plan, for no good reason Lowry could see other than spite. Banks was uncertain, indecisive. He told Lowry, “Precipitous action is worse than no action at all. Time is on our side. We can’t afford errors.”
“Sir, the Agents won’t wait. They’ll—”
“Don’t make me report you, Lowry.”
Lowry wired off his recommendation to Kingstown. He received no response.
On the off chance, he then wired off to Kingstown and to Angelus, asking for a list of all persons traveling west to Kingstown by Engine who had indicated on their travel applications an intention to proceed on to the environs of the Hospital. He was delighted to receive back, only a few hours later, a message consisting of a long list of names and destinations: a Mr. Joseph D’Avignon III, financier, in transit from Harrow Cross, en route to Greenbank on business; a Reverend Ed Kearney, traveling on Smiler missionary business; a Dr. Lysvet Alverhuysen, in transit from Gloriana . . .
He wired back precise instructions for how each of them should be handled.
He waited, imagining he might receive a response commending him for his quick thinking.
After a while, one of the Signalmen—it was Portis, Private (First Class)—pointed out that the telegraph in Kloan had been silent for a suspiciously long time.
“Fuck,” Lowry said.
Within hours, Kloan swarmed with the men of the Line. Two of the Heavier-Than-Air Vessels circled overheard like vultures, whipping up Kloan’s ashes. Morningside’s men secured the area. Lowry barged unannounced into the Mayor’s office, sat down, and said, “Our condolences on your recent tragedy. We expect your full cooperation, sir.”
The Mayor of Kloan was a man of powerful body but only mediocre intellect. He was also Kloan’s main landowner and hotelier, its lawyer and for most purposes its judge, and its poor excuse for a preacher.
Kloan’s folk were Smilers, one of the most persistent and ubiquitous of various small-town faiths based on self-improvement and self-confidence and self-help. Lowry regarded it as nonsense at best, prideful and blasphemous at worst. He could just imagine the big oaf of a Mayor, every few months, pushed by some shrew wife’s nagging, trying to lead the Self-Improvement Circles, and making a fool of himself. A strong handshake, a winning smile, could carry
a man far out here; in Line country, the Mayor would be considered a simpleton, barely fit to shovel coal.
Lowry didn’t have a high opinion of anyone from outside the Line, but his opinion of the Mayor was particularly low.
Lowry said nothing. He just stared at the blustering hick across the desk from him; he let the Mayor say it again: “I said you don’t have no jurisdiction here, Mr. Lowry. We’ve suffered enough.”
Lowry let the idiot start to say it one more fucking time then cut him off—leaned forward in his chair, snapped his fingers, and said: “My bosses think maybe your nice little town was harboring this villain. This man of the Gun. It’s how they think, Mr. Mayor; they are undiscriminating when it comes to our kind. I told them, surely this man was just passing through; surely not Kloan. They’re skeptical, Mr. Mayor. But perhaps if you’ll let us have a little poke around, we’ll find something to settle the issue. Don’t you think that would be best?”
The Mayor’s blue eyes twitched. He was twice Lowry’s size, and thick necked and sunburned where Lowry was round-shouldered, pale, and bespectacled; but he wilted under Lowry’s mild gray inexorable gaze.
It wasn’t anything special about Lowry that made the Mayor wilt—feeling stirrings of improper pride, Lowry was quick to remind himself of that. It was the weight that was behind Lowry; it was the weight of destiny that was behind him.
By small-town western-rim standards, the Mayor was an important man, with powerful friends and solemn treaties and high-stakes business dealings, and all of that would one day soon be swept aside by the annihilating weight that came rushing at Lowry’s heels. Everyone in the little room knew it.
The Mayor busied himself shuffling the letter opener around on his desk. In through the open windows came flies, and the stink of burned wood.
