by Felix Gilman
“Ever heard of a place called No-Town?”
“Sure, Cockle. Drifters talk about it. Old soldiers, too. Of course I have.”
“Where it rains whiskey, and the women are easy, and no one has to work, and old soldiers and the lion and the lamb and even old Agents can find peace.” He drew a card from the table. Engines. Useless to him. No-Town! He hadn’t thought about No-Town in years. “And my point is that that’s bullshit, too. No such thing. You’d have to be desperate to believe in it.” Well, that was the truth, wasn’t it?
Renato wouldn’t be goaded. “You’ve never seen the Spirit. It’s the real thing.”
“I saw it smash a Vessel from the sky. I saw it guard our gate. I’ll admit it exists. I don’t know about healing. Where’s the proof?”
Renato shrugged. “You just have to feel it.”
The Kid snorted and threw his cards across the table. Engines, Guns, Folk, Women. “I’m done with this shit.” He remained sitting.
“Not sure whether I do or I don’t,” Creedmoor said. “Tell me this, then: Why does it do what it does? What’s in it for the Spirit?”
“Not everything has a reason,” Renato said with infuriating priestly solemnity.
“I’m out, too,” Sichel confessed.
Hamsa stood. “I have patients to see.”
“Everything’s got a reason,” Creedmoor said.
“Maybe,” Renato said. “Maybe not.”
That was all Creedmoor could get out of him. Soon Creedmoor was out, too, and Renato took his winnings and went back to his post.
That left just Creedmoor and the Kid sitting at either end of the candlelit table.
“Well,” Creedmoor said.
“Fuck you,” the Kid said, and limped away.
The House had a fair number of female nurses. Most of them came from nearby towns, mainly Greenbank. Quite a few of them were pretty. It seemed the Director liked them that way.
—I could stay here forever, my friend. I like this work.
—Most of the other men here are cripples, Creedmoor. No wonder they like you. You have no reason to be proud.
—I like the company of nurses. I need a lot of care in my old age.
—You will get bored soon enough.
—Never!
—Question them.
He met Hannah in the afternoons in the bushes behind the herb garden; he met Ella in the north tower in the evenings. Other assignations were less regular, but not infrequent. He charmed them with stories of the cities back in the world. He had, it was true, a certain animal vigor that was rare in the House, and much appreciated. So far he had somehow managed not to make any of them hate him.
“The Spirit keeps us safe,” Hannah said. “That’s all I know. Good thing, too, or what would I be doing here alone with a bad old man like you?”
“I don’t like talking about the Spirit,” Ella said. “It feels so sad. I didn’t come here to talk about the Spirit.”
On matters relating to the patients, they were more forthcoming—after all, what else did they have to gossip about?
Hannah told him about a fierce old man on the fourth floor of the locked wards who raved about the Battle of Pechin Drift. Ella told him about an old man on the third floor who never spoke, but compulsively stole pennies and bottle tops to make himself medals. They sounded promising, and so Creedmoor stole Ella’s keys while she slept and investigated; but when he crept into their cells and looked into their faces, Marmion said:
—That is not the man.
. . . to them both.
—Oh well.
And Ella seemed a little awed by Dr. Alverhuysen, and had nothing to say about her, no matter how cunningly Creedmoor hinted and pried; but Hannah was full of rumors about the stuck-up northern bitch and the mad experiments she was doing on poor simple Daisy and that poor old General. . . .
Cards again in the afternoon. Creedmoor, Renato, Sichel, the Kid. It was getting expensive to keep letting them win.
This afternoon, Creedmoor was being argumentative. It seemed to be working well.
“Listen, Renato, I’ve traveled widely out here on the edge. I’ve seen a dozen little spirits in little towns, corn spirits, pray-for-rain spirits. They’re common out here as two-headed calves or bearded ladies. None of them are much brighter than a candle. And most of them don’t exist. And the ones that do are busy when it comes to taking sacrifice but idle when it comes to doing any good. This House is full of maimed people. I don’t see much healing happening here.”
“It heals,” Renato said.
The Kid snorted. “That’s a fucking lie.”
No one liked the Kid, but he didn’t seem to care; and they couldn’t turn him away, not given the mission of the House.
“I haven’t seen it,” Creedmoor said.
“Nothing’s easy,” Renato said. “Everything takes its time.” He touched his scars with a kind of reverence. “I was angry for a long time, you know? I used to be a handsome man. Why didn’t it take these away, too, you know?”
Sichel nodded gravely. Creedmoor maintained his expression of skepticism.
Renato went on. His voice was muffled by his domino and his wounds, but he spoke with passion. “But that’s not what it does. It takes away pain. It makes it so you can go on. It makes you at peace. It lets you endure. It’s a wonderful thing.”
Renato stopped to swig his whiskey.
Sichel grunted. “Too good for those hairy Hillfolk bastards who were squatting it.”
“Folk?” Creedmoor was interested. “There were Folk here?”
“This canyon was one big warren.”
“And? What? The Director’s father forced them out?”
“Shit, no!” Renato shook his head. “You’ve seen what the Spirit does if there’s violence in its presence.”
Sichel leaned forward and whispered. “Once I saw a nurse in the West Wing, an orderly, dealing with one of the mental cases; well, this patient’d been giving him trouble all day. Calling him names, you know. Calling his mother names. Well, this orderly, Gregor was his name, he snaps; he reaches out and he cuffs the idiot. And we all call out, Don’t! but it’s too late; there’s a pounding in our heads and the windows rattle and something surges up from the floor, through our feet, and pow.”
Sichel clapped. The Kid started; the Kid was jumpy.
“Gregor’s out the fucking window. Three stories up. One less nurse, one more patient. No, Cockle, my friend, violence here is a dicey proposition. That’s how the House’s stayed safe all these years, against bandits, against Hillfolk, against little border-state barons, even against the Line. No violence; not even against pigs or chickens. Why do you think we eat nothing but rabbit food?”
“It seemed impolite to complain,” Creedmoor said, “but I won’t say the question hasn’t concerned me.”
“Can’t so much as slit a pig’s throat. No violence. Not even against Hillfolk. No, he bought ’em out. He built ’em out. Slowly, bit by bit. Filled the canyon with our iron and our noise. They can’t stand it, right? But they couldn’t kill him, either. He built right over their paintings and their rock mounds and all that kind of thing, and they just gave up and went away.”
“Poor old Hillfolk,” Creedmoor beamed. “And now—”
The Kid spoke. “It’s a vampire, I heard.” He stared intently down at his cards. “It feeds on pain. Don’t go to the Doll House, they told us. Better to get killed clean. It takes your manhood, they told us. It needs you to suffer, to be weak, forever, like little dolls. That’s what it feeds on.”
Renato glared at the Kid. “Don’t be a damn fool.”
“No one ever leaves, do they? You all just stay here and scab over and rot.”
Renato sighed heavily. “We’re doing good work here. Where else would we go? Kid, you came here by choice. No one made you. You know it was the right thing to do, Kid. You don’t have to be so tough here. You know, maybe someone should take you to see it, take you to sit by the waters. That’
ll change your tune.”
“Maybe we should at that,” Creedmoor said. “So tell me, how does one get in to see the Spirit?”
“When the Director says.”
“Which is when?”
“When it’s right.”
He walked into Dr. Alverhuysen’s office that evening as if he owned the place, tools in hand. “Evening, Doctor,” he said, and before she could respond, he was already hammering away at the rickety half-made shelves in the corner.
She was sitting at her desk, in the light of a single candle, reading out loud from a little green book with pictures of ivy curled round the cover. Daisy was cross-legged on the floor, rocking from side to side, and the General sat ramrod-straight in the chair opposite. The Doctor’s giant oaf Maggfrid stood by the window like furniture.
“Don’t mind me, Doctor.”
“You work odd hours, Mr. Cockle.”
“Odd place. Odd times. Odd old world.”
Creedmoor had to admit that he was doing a terrible job. He was losing his patience for honest labor.
She kept reading in a quiet murmuring voice, between blows of his hammer.
“. . . ‘Yes,’ said the wolf, ‘your mother is here.’ And the woodsman’s sons looked at each other, and they looked at the wolf, and they thought about how tired they were, and what a long journey it had been through the woods; and so they did a very foolish thing, and they followed the wolf into the little house on the edge of the woods—”
“Fairy tales,” Creedmoor said. “When I was a boy back east in Lundroy, my mother used to read me fairy tales.”
“I’m sure she did, Mr. Cockle.”
“That was before my poor father died, of course. Never the same after that.”
In fact, Creedmoor’s father was, for all he knew, still alive. Certainly the bastard had been in rude health when he clouted young John Creedmoor round the ear for the last time and threw him bodily from the house. Creedmoor had lied on a sudden hunch that had told him that the Doctor herself had some damage of that variety; and it looked like he was right, because for a moment there was a flicker in her eye.
“Fairy tales,” he said.
“Yes. The book belongs to Director Howell. The General seems to have a fascination for fairy tales. At least, if the patterns of his speech are reflective of any inner mental process, and not simply arbitrary. Who knows? It may catch his attention. And Daisy won’t mind.”
Maggfrid said, “I don’t mind either.”
“Nor does Maggfrid, of course.”
“Good for you, Maggfrid! Nor do I. Does it work?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Creedmoor said, “That must be frustrating.” He thought:
—Well? Is it him?
—Possibly, Creedmoor. He is old enough.
He noticed the little bottle of green nerve tonic on the desk next to her glass of water and smiled. Ha! Old Dandy Fanshawe had been a devil for opium, too.
“Yes, Mr. Cockle?”
“Nothing, Doctor. Just enjoying the story. I’ll work quietly.”
“Be as loud as you like, Mr. Cockle—they won’t hear my voice, whatever you do.”
—Examine him more closely, Creedmoor.
“You sound tired. I can take over for a spell if you’d like.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Cockle.”
“I like a good story, Doctor.”
He sat on the edge of her desk, next to the old man.
“Maggfrid, old fellow, come closer. Come on. Join in.”
He looked idly through the little pile of her books. Scientific texts, mostly. His eye was caught by a little red book, which looked out of place; and when he picked it up and flipped through it he saw that it was something called A Child’s History of the West. Some piece of pious propaganda left over from the old Red Valley Republic. How they’d loved to preach to children! Creedmoor flipped with amusement forward past pompous condemnations of the depravity of the Agents of the Gun. He flipped back . . .
—No.
He stopped at the frontispiece, which showed a severe and sharp-nosed man in a splendid red uniform. Dark skin, silver hair.
—No. Surely not. Is this who we’re looking for?
—Perhaps, Creedmoor.
—But he’s dead.
—Perhaps not.
—Is this him? I can’t tell. It might be. Thirty years have passed since this was printed, and the picture flatters him and he has not aged well but the resemblance is there. Is it him?
—We cannot be sure. Possibly.
—The Doctor doesn’t know.
—A stupid woman.
—Some said he died at Black Cap Valley. Some said he went bandit and died under the Line ten years after Black Cap. No one ever said he survived mad in hospital. Is it really him? Hah! You sent me here to find the General Enver. Why? What do you want him for? Tell me your secrets—I’ll find out anyway. I’m lucky, after all.
They reached out and stung him—a tiny taste of the Goad. A gesture of pique. He’d annoyed them. His sinuses burned, and one eye went bloodshot.
“Are you all right, Mr. Cockle?”
“Quite all right, Doctor. Quite all right.”
She held out the little green book of fairy tales. “You were going to read to the patients.”
“Right. Of course.” He put down the Child’s History and read them fairy tales.
He read them a fairy tale about a message in a bottle. Meanwhile, the voice in his head whispered to him:
—Listen, then, Creedmoor. We give you our trust. Do not betray it.
—How could I?
—Late last year, the Line seized a town called Brazenwood. They drilled there for oil. Among the wreckage, in a pawnshop, in the pages of a girl’s ridiculous journal of flowers and fancies, they found the General Enver’s last letter, to his granddaughter, who is dead, recording his last journey into the mountains. Which mountains, and where? We do not know. The Line does not know either, or so our spies tell us. The letter speaks of the First Folk, and a weapon, which lies somewhere. . . .
CHAPTER 19
THE SPIRIT
Liv went to the Director’s office in the morning. She found him making notes in a journal. He put it aside, stood to greet her, and instantly resumed their conversation as if it had never been interrupted.
“I have something to show you, Doctor.” He put on a tweed jacket and folded his glasses and put them in his pocket.
“So you said. And here I am, Director.”
“Excellent. Now, you have never asked about our Guardian, I think. About our Guardian; our Spirit; our familiar; our genius loci. Our Egregore. Or what have you.”
“I suppose I haven’t. I think I saw enough of it.”
“You’re from the North, of course. The old world. Where reason and science are respected. Where things are made and ordered. Where men are ruled by men. And by women, too, of course. Such things as our Guardian must seem very strange to you. Almost barbaric, perhaps? No, no; that’s all right. Will you take my arm?”
“Of course, Director.”
“Walk with me.”
They walked into the halls of the West Wing, and downstairs.
“My father,” the Director said, “was a medical doctor by training, and a mine owner by inheritance, but an anthropologist by vocation. Like Dr. Hamsa, he studied in Jasper. He was once fortunate enough to visit your alma mater, Doctor, in the very far distant north; did you know that?”
She said, “I did not.”
“A beautiful place, I hear. We must talk about it sometime. One of these evenings.” He smiled at her. It occurred to her that he was unmarried, and probably lonely. However, she could see no polite way to withdraw her arm from his.
They passed through the kitchens.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Doctor. Have you met the Hillfolk of these parts?”
“The Folk?” She preferred not to discuss the attack on Bond’s caravan. “I suppose so. I’ve seen them
working as slaves in the fields. I believe I saw some watching me from the hills as our coach passed along the roads. They are so very thin and pale and hairy; their long manes remind me of trolls from a children’s story. That fierce red paint all over their bodies.”
“The red markings are signs of seniority and wisdom. And seniority in the case of deathless reborning creatures is not to be sniffed at. . . . Free Hillfolk, you say? Not chained in the fields? If you saw them, then they wished to be seen. The red markings are not paint, incidentally. What they are is not clear. They turn to dust quickly under the microscope. I suspect a paste of mica, indigo flowers.”
They left the kitchens and passed into a maze of low-ceilinged corridors. She said, “You’ve made a study of them.”
“My father did. The proudest moment in my father’s life, after of course his visit to your country, was when he persuaded one of the Folk to allow him entry into their tunnels and he was able to inspect their paintings—I know this from his journals, in which the subject is discussed at . . . Excuse me.”
A patient had just emerged from a corridor into their path. The Director let go of Liv and held her patient’s hand very firmly between both of his and looked into her wide bruised eyes and said: “Are you well? Do tell me. Do tell me everything.”
The girl looked panicked.
“In your own time.” He patted her hand and instantly took Liv’s arm again, as if switching dance partners, and he whirled Liv away down soft blue hallways.
“The Folk were here before us, of course. Before all our border states and towns. Out here on the western edge of the world, where things are strange and not-yet-made. To them this land is sacred. To them it is the center of all things: the place where the Spirits are born in the earth, where dreams walk. Some people say that the Folk are not fully made men themselves, and that is why they do not die. If that’s so, then are they any the worse off for it? Perhaps civilization has not reduced them as it has us.”
“You’re a romantic, Director.”
“And you’re not, Doctor? You came a long way to be here.” He spun suddenly on his heel and withdrew a set of keys from his pocket. “My father studied their ways. Their rituals. He produced a number of monographs. He published a memoir. Through here.”
