by Felix Gilman
—You piece of shit Marmion you pieces of shit all of you I pray the Line destroys and devours you but only after I am gone safely to my grave so so be it then: west it is.
Liv’s horse had fled a little way when the shooting began. Not far. Now it waited nervously, and Liv waited with it.
She watched Creedmoor lower his Gun. He put his head in his hand and his chest rose and fell as he breathed slowly, deeply.
She didn’t dare move.
At last he lifted his head and turned to Liv.
“Liv? Still here? Good. Our plans have changed. We will not be continuing to Greenbank and to old dear friends and east to civilization and to warm baths and a change of clothes and the councils of our betters. We will be fleeing west, into uncharted, uncreated lands. We will be pioneers.”
He pointed with a grand flourish across the valley below, in a direction that Liv supposed was westward. He smiled as if he were trying to sell it to her.
The river below was wide and white-rushing. Its banks were stony and the river itself broke around sharp black rocks. Her heart clenched at the thought of fording it. Beyond the river were sandy plains of yellow grass and a dark forest of tangled oaks; hills and a forest of pine; sharp hills like broken teeth for miles and miles, under a haze of heat and clouds; blue mountains wreathed in white—And Creedmoor’s grinning teeth were discolored and uneven, and his eyes bloodshot.
“Let me go, Creedmoor.”
“No.”
Lowry got nothing out of Fanshawe. He worked Fanshawe over, and the old man just kept laughing through bloodied broken teeth. Lowry’s satisfaction in the task didn’t last long, and after it was gone, the job still stretched out ahead of him through a long, long afternoon in the ash and ruins of Greenbank. Eventually he got sick of the whole sordid business and handed it over to his professional interrogators. Unlike the Agents, he was not a sadist, he was not a pervert, he did not relish cruelty for its own sake.
He returned to Kloan, and to the warm noisy shadows of his communications tent.
He spent some time drafting a message to be wired back to Angelus and Kingstown.
THREE AGENTS OF THE ENEMY EXECUTED AT GREENBANK.
“FANSHAWE” TAKEN ALIVE. TARGET IN HANDS OF FOURTH AGENT, BELIEVED TO BE “JOHN CREEDMOOR,” LOCATION PRESENTLY UNKNOWN.
They would punish him for losing Creedmoor. A message would come, not to him but to some underling, Thernstrom perhaps, an order that he go the way Banks went.
In hopes of saving his neck, he noted that
DR. ALVERHUYSEN IS STILL WITH AGENT AND TARGET.
SIGNAL DEVICE ENABLES PURSUIT OF TARGET. SIGNAL
DEVICE WAS PLANTED ON DOCTOR AT SUGGESTION OF
ACTING CONDUCTOR LOWRY.
It was a stroke of extraordinary good luck that the Agent had taken her with him. Had he not, Lowry would probably have shot himself hours ago, to save the Engines the expense of a telegram.
He tried to think of a way to suggest, without precisely lying, that it had been part of his plan all along that the Agent would take the Doctor with him. . . .
“Sir.”
“What is it, Thernstrom?”
“The interrogators have finalized their report.”
“Fanshawe. Yes. And?”
“In summary, sir: He was contacted two months ago in Gibson City with instructions to—”
“No. Where’s Creedmoor? Where’s Creedmoor going? Does he know that?”
“Southeast. He was to accompany Creedmoor and the target to a place in Keaton called—”
“Have it destroyed. That’s a thousand miles away. Where is he going now?”
“Unknown.”
“Execute him.”
“Sir—”
“Execute him. We can’t spare men to look after him. And look, I’ve already stamped the forms.”
He stamped the forms to authorize the disposal of the three Agents’ bodies by fire. He stamped a series of further forms authorizing the payment of compensation for damage and loss of life to Greenbank, in return for permanent representation of the Line’s interests in Greenbank’s administration.
And then he had to deal with his Subalterns, who wanted to tell him just how severe their losses were: how many vehicles had been lost, how many men, how much matériel. . . . His stamp was needed on a whole weary afternoon’s worth of forms.
The next day he reorganized the patrols, taking into account the recent degradation of his forces. He spread them out to cordon off all points southeast of Greenbank.
No signs of Creedmoor were reported.
The Signal Corps reported that the device was working poorly; Creedmoor might be anywhere in a thirty-mile radius.
No orders came that he should be relieved of command.
Nor the next day.
Thernstrom came rushing in again. It was the late evening of the third day after the Greenbank incident.
“What, Thernstrom.”
“The Signal Corps, sir. The device is working again. It passed through some interference, but it’s transmitting again with tolerable precision.”
“Well?”
“Precise location unknown. But he’s gone west.”
“West?”
“Straight west. Fast, too.”
“There’s nothing west of here. Slag it, there’s hardly anything here. Where’s he going?”
“West, sir. He has several days’ lead on us. He’ll be out past the farthest outlying settlements and into wild territory.”
“Then we follow.”
“Sir? We’re undermanned for any such expedition. Conditions will be unfavorable for—”
“We follow. No delays. No time for reinforcements. All presently available vehicles and men to be mobilized. Go on. Get out of here, Thernstrom. No one sleeps tonight.”
Thernstrom stepped out. Lowry sat in the shadows with his head in his hands.
West. Unmade lands. Part of him was so terrified, he could vomit; part of him was so relieved, his sallow jaw kept creasing into a smile. . . . If the empty sky and frightening hills here on the western rim were bad, the lands beyond would be a nightmare. On the other hand, Lowry did not plan on waiting around in Kloan to be relieved of command if there was any respectable alternative. So west it was, then.
CHAPTER 28
THE RAINS
West of the western rim: the first thing that fell apart was the weather. It rained for ten fucking days, and all Lowry’s motor trucks mired in mud. The Heavier-Than-Air Vessels were grounded. Even the tents were washed away in mudslides, and somehow dozens of Lowry’s men managed to drown, to fucking drown, miles from any river or sea, on flat mud. So much mud, the Engines themselves might flounder and drown in the depths. The rain fell in shafts that hammered Lowry’s skull; it fell in sheets that washed the world away five feet in front of Lowry’s face. And the signal from the device in the gold watch the woman carried was weak; in the constant crashing rain, the ethereal vibrations of the device’s delicate hammers and rods were lost—drowned—damn it. Four artillery pieces and two motor guns sank in mud. Two of the telegraph devices were ruined, and one of the two amplifiers, despite all efforts to waterproof them. Patrols went out and they came back days late, or not at all, as if washed away. Their weapons jammed so bad, it was a good thing they couldn’t catch up with the Agent; he would have slaughtered them. They crept forward. Every foot they slogged forward, they slid six inches back.
After ten days, the rains broke without warning or apology—just plain stopped and the clouds parted and the sun came roaring on in, and within ten minutes the Linesmen were steaming and baking in their soaked uniforms. Some of the men put their heads back and turned their pale faces to the sun.
“Well, come on, then,” Lowry roared. “Let’s get moving again. Come on, come on.”
Fuck the weather out here. It made no sense and it had no decency at all. That was how it was out there, over the border of creation and into lands not yet reduced to order. How Lowry longed to se
e all that land subdued and made sane.
The rains had come out of a cloudless sky without warning—a sudden madness of the heavens. Mud and rain came roaring downslope toward them. The first thing they lost were their horses. One was washed from its feet and broke its leg. The other fled into the rains and was lost from view. After that, Creedmoor and Liv moved on foot from shelter to shelter, caves and overhangs, as one rat-hole after another flooded. Very soon there was no shelter. “High ground,” Creedmoor said. “High ground!” He slung the General’s brittle body over his shoulder. Liv staggered behind, sliding in the mud; sometimes Creedmoor had to carry her, too. The rains seemed to pour down for years; they seemed to have been pouring forever. The drumming and pounding of it drove all thoughts out of Liv’s skull except survival, and soon even that was beyond her, and all she could do was inch along in Creedmoor’s wake. From time to time, Creedmoor was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear his words; in the gray hell of driving water, she could barely see his mouth working.
She took the last of her tonic; cupping her shaking hands to keep the rain out, she drank down the dregs of the vial. She risked overdose, but she did not expect to survive the rains anyway. For some uncountable blissful period of time, she felt nothing at all; she believed she was following Creedmoor, but she could not be sure of it; the rains were gentle and their purpose clear and sane.
But that was the last of it. As it left her body, her joints racked with pain and her head burned; Liv lay in a cave, while the rains pounded outside, and the last of that sickly-sweet poison sweated out of her crawling skin. It seemed that Creedmoor stood over her and wiped the sweat from her brow. It seemed that her mother was there, holding her, whispering to her, scolding her for her weakness. Her very good friend Agatha from the Faculty of Mathematics offered to make her green tea, and stirred poison into it with a dirty knife. The cave’s walls crawled and glimmered with the Folk red markings, and it seemed she was watched, from the cave’s far shadows, from beneath a vast and wild black mane, by curious alien eyes in a deathly white face. She thought she was going to die, but she did not.
When she returned to herself, she was not in a cave, and perhaps never had been; she was slogging along through mud, Creedmoor’s arm around her shoulder as he pulled her and pushed the General and yelled, “Faster, Liv! They’re closing.”
It was still raining.
A Line patrol blundered upon them.
They were slogging ankle deep across a plain of seemingly infinite mud and rain in search of shelter. Creedmoor forged on ahead, shoulders down, the General in his arms. Liv stumbled after him, screaming, “Creedmoor!”
He screamed back, “Keep moving!” One had to scream to be heard over the rains.
“Where are we going, Creedmoor?”
“How would I know? Forward. West or east or back, which way’s the damn sun? Day or night? How would I know, just—”
And the patrol just stepped out of sheets of thundering rain ahead of them as if from behind a curtain. More than a dozen Linesmen in black uniforms rain-plastered to their bodies. They marched heads-down. When they saw Creedmoor, their mouths fell open with surprise and exhaustion. Creedmoor looked briefly stunned, too, as if the rains dulled even his keen predator’s senses.
He shoved the General back into Liv’s arms. The Linesmen lifted their rifles, struggling against the rains’ downward force. She pulled the General down into the mud, where she lay prone beside him.
When she looked up again, Creedmoor was gone. She heard his Gun fire once, twice. Between washes of rain, she saw a red flash and something moving. The Linesmen shouted in panic. She saw bodies dressed in black falling—one, two, three, four—how many of them were there? The mud went slick and black with blood; it was quickly washed away. The General kept trying to stand. He was barking out nonsense orders—calling out, “To me! Forward for the Republic! Strike at their flank; damn their cannon!” Liv tried to hold him down for a moment; then she just let him go. He fell over anyway in the rain-slick blood-slick mud and lay on his back shouting orders at the sky. The noise of the Linesmen’s rifles was tinny and rattling next to the deep thunder of Creedmoor’s Gun. Then it stopped altogether.
She was crying. Rain washed mud and tears from her face.
Creedmoor pulled her to her feet. “Keep moving.”
The rains ceased without warning. The sky parted and sun burst across the world. Everything shone so bright, it seemed it could catch fire.
They were in a wide and deep valley. Before them the ground rose through bands of green and brown scrub, becoming a great hillside like a woman lying on her side, above which the sun burned through white clouds.
Beneath Liv’s feet, the mud was already drying, turning red, cracking.
Creedmoor shaded his eyes, looked around. The air was beautifully clear, and it was apparent that there were no Linesmen for miles around.
“West,” he said. “Soon we won’t be able to trust the sun out here, but for now that way’s west, so: Forward.”
He lifted the General into his arms and set off up the hill.
Again they stood on the side of a hill, among pines and hemlock, overlooking a valley. Below them, the hill was a slope of flinty scree that slid down into a dry riverbed. How was it possible that the riverbed was dry after those rains? This was a strange place.
Something sparkled and glinted in the sun, all along the riverbed far below: It might have been gold; it might have been diamonds.
The other side of the valley was a sweep of dense and dark forest. Liv could name none of the trees. She was dreadfully hungry and weak and she believed she was developing a fever.
Creedmoor scanned the distant forests, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun, the other on his Gun. “They say,” he remarked conversationally, “that if one presses far enough to the west, there is a sea. The handful of madmen who’ve pushed out this far report it. A sea. Just as the ancient far East is bounded by old seas, and cooled and gentled by their lapping waters.”
Creedmoor was not hungry or weak or sick; he never was.
“But the western sea is a mad and stormy thing. Indeed, those few who have seen it say that it is hard to know where the land ends and the sea begins, so changeable and stormy and foggy and swampy and generally foul the land out there is, so windswept and glacier-carved into sealike waves. And the sky, they say, cascades and pulses in green-blue waves of starlight, space-light. And the sea itself is cold and steams and rages like fire. I should think it is very haunted indeed. The world that is not yet made is where demons are born. The world unravels at its edge. But fortunately, I do not think we shall have to go so far. I believe our pursuers are lagging very far behind and soon . . . Aha!”
His Gun was in his hand and he fired at the far hillside.
He turned to Liv and smiled. “A deer! Fat days are here again, Liv! You stay here with our elderly friend. Talk things over with him. Remember your vocation, Liv—we want this poor old man up and walking and spilling his secrets.”
“I can’t, Creedmoor.”
“Liv. Listen closely. This is what you are here to do. For all I know, it may be why you were put on this earth. What he knows might mean the end of the Great War. Peace, Liv. They’ll build statues to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Creedmoor.”
“Excellent. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out. Get to work. I’ll return shortly.”
He picked up his pack and rummaged for knives and rope.
“It’s miles away. What if some other animal steals it?” Liv hated the desperation in her voice, but she was so hungry.
He grinned. “What animal would dare?”
Then, hand on his head to keep his hat on, he slid down the scree. He went fast, recklessly, like a much, much younger man.
When he was far enough away—he was never too far away to see her, but she hoped he wasn’t looking—Liv scrabbled on the ground for sharp flints. She snapped away a dry branch from the
nearest tree. It was stiff; she was horrified by how weak she had become. She sat with her back to the valley and tried to sharpen a weapon from the wood. It snapped in her hands. She was too weak to cry.
She composed herself.
She sat cross-legged in front of the General, and she held his face—gently, firmly—so that his eyes were on her.
“Secrets, Creedmoor says. Spilling your secrets. What do they want from you, you poor old man?”
His eyes wandered again and she let go. She sighed.
“You must have been a very great General indeed, if they want you so badly.”
Liv sat before the General and considered how to proceed.
“In the rain, you were giving orders.”
He began to mutter nonsense.
“Wait; hush; listen. What did you remember? Where were you? What’s still in there?”
He did not stop muttering.
With some self-consciousness, she sat straight; stiffened her spine and squared her thin shoulders; deepened her voice as much as she could; and asked, “What are your orders, Sir?”
Was that a flicker of interest, of recognition?
He began to urinate.
Creedmoor came running noisily up the scree slope, the deer slung over his shoulders. Its pelt was a striped red-black that Liv thought—not that she any great experience with deer—rather unusual. Creedmoor threw it down and rubbed his bloody hands with glee.
“Any progress with our friend, Liv? Has he said anything interesting?”
“No, Mr. Creedmoor. Do you expect results in an hour?”
“Call me Creedmoor. And you’re quite right; early days yet.”
Creedmoor made a fire. He looked at the General’s rheumy eyes and reached into his pack, from which he produced a vial that Liv recognized as fever medicine stolen from the House. He dribbled it down the old man’s throat. After a little thought, he offered the vial to Liv. She dosed herself with shaking hands.
