The Half-Made World

by Felix Gilman

  Creedmoor drew a knife from his boot. “Well?” He waved it vaguely at her and at the trees. “Gather firewood.” He dug the knife point in under the deer’s hide and began tearing.

  She went into the trees to gather firewood. It was a strange and unpleasant experience, about which she was too tired to think clearly.

  She brought back dry branches and stacked them crosswise, according to his instructions.

  He butchered the animal in front of her. Her mouth watered at the grisly sight. In a warm conversational tone, he explained just how it was done. He cut the meat into thin strips, some of which he hung to dry in the sun over the spiny branches of a tree on the edge of the slope, and some of which he cooked.

  “To absent friends,” he said as he gnawed on a strip of flesh. “My friends are all monsters and they should have been hanged long ago; nevertheless, I shall mourn them. Not because they deserve to be mourned, but because I do not deserve it either, but I hope they’ll miss me when I go.”

  His head was bowed. “So: Black Roth. Dagger Mary. Stephen Sutter. Keane. Hang-’Em-High Washburne. Drunkard Cuffee. Abban the Lion. Dandy Fanshawe.” His voice caught on the last name.

  He looked up and winked. His sentimental mood seemed to leave him as fast as it had come.

  “On the other hand, fuck ’em all; they’re dead and I’m alive.” He laughed. “Absent friends!”

  Liv gasped and put her hand to her mouth; she realized that she’d quite forgotten Maggfrid, who’d be terribly frightened without her. . . .

  After they ate, Creedmoor sat himself back in the shade and removed a small paperback novel from his pack. He opened the pages carefully; the rain had forced its way into the pack, and the book was lumpy and swollen. The Child’s History had fared no better.

  “Someone must keep the flies from the meat while it dries, Liv. Would you mind at all taking the first shift? . . .”

  Liv spent the remainder of the afternoon standing on the edge of the steep slope, swatting at flies with a pine branch. Her feet were blistered, and she shifted her weight uncomfortably. Her nerves flared and jangled and ached dully, and she could think of little else but her nerve tonic. There was no hope of obtaining more of it while they remained on their westward course. There were substitutes for it that could be extracted from certain herbs, but she had only the haziest idea how. In any case, she recognized none of the strange plants that grew out on the edge of the world. They seemed made according to no settled or sane rules of botany.

  For instance—among the trees from which she’d cut firewood for their meal, there had been a growth of bristly greenish black weeds; and she’d been deeply disconcerted, on bending down for closer inspection, to see the leaves and petals surrounded by twitching black segmented legs like those of flies, or bees; as if the distinction between animal and vegetable was not yet clearly or regularly observed out here. She had very much disliked the way the green flowers turned slowly toward her.

  Liv told herself to be strong: to maintain, by force of will if necessary, her reason. She swatted the branch back and forth, back and forth, and watched the dull meanderings of the flies. After a while, she forgot herself in the work.

  Creedmoor fell asleep over his novel. Twice, he lurched up and fired a shot that claimed an animal in the scrub nearby. The first was a white rabbit; the second was rabbit-eared but otherwise mostly doglike. He cleaned and stripped them, too.

  Shortly before he fell asleep for the last time, he looked up and waved to catch Liv’s attention.

  “Yes, Mr. Creedmoor?”

  “I forgot to tell you. That old madman who pissed on you this afternoon is none other than the General Orlan Enver, architect and hero of the Red Valley Republic, greatest of the great men of Western history.”

  He grinned broadly and his eyes twinkled. He seemed to have hugely enjoyed revealing that secret.

  Then he leaned back and fell asleep for good and was soon snoring like an Engine.

  The General was asleep, too. Liv regarded him with astonishment.

  The stars came out. They were different. A spiderweb of light hung over the western edge of the world. One bright star shot and burned out, then another; then a third; then the web dissolved into darkness.

  In the morning, they went down into the valley.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE VALLEY

  —Creedmoor.

  —Yes?

  —You talk too much to the woman. You should not have told her who the General is. We ordered you not to.

  —Too late now. And how else can she do her job?

  —And you let her poke around in the General’s mind. If she succeeds, you know you must kill her.

  —I understand your position.

  —In the end, you must kill her.

  —Suppose I refuse? I’m not saying I will or I won’t. But if I did. What then?

  —You are increasingly rude and arrogant. We should renew your respect for your masters.

  —But you need me whole and healthy and fleet of foot.

  —For now. Creedmoor, we must leave you for the time being. There are deliberations under way in our Lodge. We are making alternative plans. In the event of your failure. It is . . . difficult. Painful. Frightening. It demands our attention. We can leave you with strength; you will not have our wisdom.

  —Somehow I’ll manage without your wisdom, then.

  —You have your orders. Flee west. Do not think we are not watching you.

  Creedmoor suddenly lifted his head and smiled at Liv.

  “Courage, Liv. All will be well. We must go on alone as best we can.”

  They walked down the dry riverbed. It was their second day in the valley. The narrow corridor stretched through the hills and farther into the distance than Liv could see. She’d learned to tell by the sun that they were heading roughly westward.

  “Above all, I regret the loss of our horses,” Creedmoor said. “Noble beasts, the both of them. But the important thing is that there are no roads out here, and we’ll avoid the plains, and so our pursuers’ vehicles will be useless to them. They can’t ride horses, Liv, the Linesmen can’t—they are afraid of their muscles and eyes and teeth and wildness. And their little fat legs and blackened lungs will not carry them fast. We have a solid lead. I am quite optimistic.”

  The sun itself still blazed red-hot; however, it had set very early the day before, as if it was midwinter. Creedmoor had shrugged and told her not to worry about it: things would be strange as they went west.

  There’d been dreadful winds down the valley all night, lifting the stones of the riverbed and sending them hurtling down. They’d sheltered in a river-carved grotto and listened to the echoes of the tumbling stones. In the morning, they walked on over the cracked red mud of the riverbed.

  Around midday, when the sun flooded the riverbed with terrible heat, they sheltered again under an overhang of rock. It had been hollowed out centuries ago by the river’s passage. There was a trickle of water beneath it, which Creedmoor pronounced safe. He filled his water-skin and doled out the strips of dried meat and they ate.

  It was hard work forcing the stuff down the General’s throat, as he moaned and shifted and refused to swallow. He fouled himself, and Liv had to clean him as best she could. She felt very keenly the absence of nurses.

  “It would be unchivalrous of me to leave the old man’s care entirely to you,” Creedmoor said. “Remind me to take my turn one of these days.”

  He settled in to read his novel with evident pleasure. He started to whistle.

  Liv sat beside the General.

  “General Enver,” she said. He didn’t look at her.

  She felt ridiculous now, reading him fairy tales or talking to him like a fool, or prodding and poking him with drugs and electrical therapy.

  “We are in the presence of history,” Creedmoor interjected. She ignored him.

  “General, I read your book,” she said. She was aware that the General was a great figure in the West’s
troubled history; that meant very little to her. To her, the broken creature beside her was first and foremost the author of the Child’s History.

  He was humorless, proud, a little self-righteous, in many ways narrow. His lectures on decency and fair play and democracy and moral cleanliness were often unintentionally amusing. His system of virtues (seven personal, six civic, five martial, illustrated diagrammatically in an appendix) was closer to madness than to philosophy. And yet . . . the Child’s History emphasized more than once that General Enver was merely an ordinary dutiful hardworking citizen like yourself, but it was clear that he was not, and knew he was not; he was a visionary.

  He had been there in the Republic’s first days, in Morgan Town, when it was a conspiracy of scholars and idealistic aristocrats, meeting in the upper rooms of taverns. He alone had dared to make their philosophies real. He had liberated Morgan Town, Asher, Lud-Town. He had turned the Red Valley Accord, which had been a kind of loose mercantile association of baronies and trading companies and city-states, into a military alliance, then a movement, then a faith, then a spearhead of conquering forces that had swept south, and west, and then east, toppling petty states and towns and self-styled dukedoms and kingdoms and forcing their rulers, at gunpoint if necessary, to sit at the great stone meeting hall in the Red Valley and, grumbling, to cast their votes in the jury-rigged but rather remarkable democracy of nations they called a Republic. He had purged the Agents of the Gun from his lands; he had held back the Line. Liv knew little of politics and nothing of tactics, but it was apparent even so that he was a genius.

  He had been present at the banks of the Red River for the signing of the Charter, but he had not signed; he’d said he was just a simple soldier. He left that to the Presidents and the Senators and their kind.

  Liv removed the Child’s History from the pocket of her baggy red flannel shirt. It had been swollen by the rains and now by her own sweat into a shape that was curved and gilled like fungus, and decades of its story were now unreadable, but it had survived. It was a well-made old thing.

  “Do you remember this, General?”

  He said nothing.

  “Very well, then.” She opened it and began at the beginning.

  In the winter of the year 1482, representatives of the nations and trading companies of the East met to discuss the news that a pass had been discovered in the World’s End mountains, which had previously been thought impassable. Indeed, it was commonly believed by scholars and peasants alike that the mountains had been erected by God for that very purpose—impassability. Perhaps He had changed His plans. Reports of initial explorers were of an ocean of dark woods. It appeared that God’s Creation was far larger than anyone had imagined. Some foolish priests, who saw in change only the danger of decline, not the hope of progress, fell into despair. Braver and more forward-thinking fellows discussed exploration. From these discussions came the famous Council of Seven Nations—the Maessen Principalities, Dhrav, Juddua, the Provinces of Kees, little Koenigswald. . . .

  The General showed no interest.

  “Try violence,” Creedmoor interrupted. “I made progress when I threatened him.”

  “You are disgusting, Creedmoor.”

  She’d been suddenly angry; the words had spilled out. She glanced at him nervously, but he only smiled.

  “Cooler now,” he said. “Positively chilly. Time to move on.”

  All afternoon and all evening they trekked west down the valley. The sun seemed not so much to set as to recede, shrinking slowly in size and in brightness as if withdrawing from the world into the interstellar depths, until at last it was only one of countless dim stars. The moon, by contrast, grew and grew, larger and larger, yellow at first and then closer to red, until Liv could no longer bear to look at it.

  When she tore her eyes away from the derangement of the heavens, she noticed that Creedmoor was looking intently around at the valley’s dark walls, and appeared to be listening for something.

  He put a finger to his lips.

  She listened. She slowly became aware of sounds of distant motion—and snorting, and grunting, and what might have been barking.

  Something howled.

  “Not the Linesmen,” she whispered.

  Creedmoor shook his head. He whispered, “No. They are days behind us. Short legs, as I think I’ve said. I hear them only faintly, which is a relief; their conversation is dull.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I have no idea. Could be anything. I suggest you ignore it.”

  They continued.

  The next day was cool and pleasant. Nothing in the behavior of the sky was remarkable, and there were no disturbing noises. They stopped to eat and rest in the open air, in the gentle breeze that blew down the riverbed and rustled the willow trees on its banks. Creedmoor produced a battered tin cup from his pack and made a small fire. With a grand air, he also produced a bag of dark leaves, and he made tea. Liv shivered at the waste of water.

  She had never before noticed a waste of water.

  But the leaves had been spoiled in the downpour and the tea was not a success. “It’s the effort that counts,” Creedmoor explained, and he downed the bitter dregs. “As a representative of civilization, Liv, you will understand. Now you and the General sit for a moment; rest. Talk amongst yourselves.”

  Creedmoor jogged off up the wooded slopes. For food? To spy on their pursuers? Liv had no idea.

  She sat under the willows and attempted to ignore the way the green fronds flexed and stroked the air as if they were trying to become fingers. . . .

  She checked her golden pocket watch. It was still broken. It had broken days ago. It still ticked steadily, but some days the hands didn’t turn, and some days they spun so fast, the mechanism shuddered, and sometimes they turned backwards—the land out here was not yet ready to be reduced to regular time. Useless though it was, she didn’t quite have the heart to throw it away. Surely it would never be found, and that saddened her.

  She made a search for weapons and was stunned to find, on the riverbed’s floor, among the flat round river stones, a stone spearhead. Arrowhead, perhaps. She had no idea and didn’t care. It was very sharp. She soon found another, and another.

  Hillfolk’s traces. So obvious, even she could see them—but of course, this far west they had no reason to hide themselves. Were they recent? Surely Creedmoor, too, had seen them, long before she had; why had he left her alone with these weapons? Was he watching to see what she would do with them?

  That way lay madness, paranoia, ultimately paralysis: Liv shut the door firmly on such speculation. She selected the lightest and sharpest of the arrowheads. She slipped it under her clothes—under the shapeless red flannels Creedmoor had purchased from the wife of that farmer near Kloan; beneath the farmer’s heavy belt that still felt so strange on her.

  How she hated to wear the clothes he’d stolen for her!

  It was not uncommon, Liv knew, for persons in her unenviable situation to form attachments to their captors. She had for an instant felt that it was disloyal to plot against him. She had no intention of allowing that to go any further, either. She’d seen him murder a man—do not lose sight of that.

  Creedmoor bounded up the sandy slope. He was happy. The simple purpose of walking west was proving quite enough to entertain him. Fresh air and exercise was, as the good Doctor and the General would no doubt agree, the best of all medicines. More important, it was days since his masters had spoken in his mind; it was days since he’d had to do anything degrading or dreadful. In fact, one could say he was engaged in a noble cause, shepherding the poor old man and the young lady to safety from the Line. . . . It amused him to imagine so, anyway.

  When he stood on a high rock and cupped his ear, the Line’s blunderers were just barely audible in the distance. Their heavy stamping boots were a remote echo. He had days of lead on them.

  He found a freshwater stream and filled his water-skins.

  He’d saved a handful of cigare
ttes from the long rain in a tin case. Now was as good a time as any to indulge himself. He sat against the rock and smoked and listened to the stream.

  The rocks around the stream were marked with swirls of crimson paint. Flakes and facets of cobalt and red glittered in the sun that fell through the trees.

  The stream’s water pooled between the rocks. Motion in the water caught his eye, and he knelt to look more closely.

  From the water’s depths hands reached up. The pale white hands of drowned men. Thin almost fleshless fingers waving nervelessly like weeds on the tide. He could count three, four, ten: but counting was beside the point. A single broken nail violated the water’s tense surface; a shock, an obscenity, as if his reflection had winked at him in his morning shaving mirror. The dead flesh beneath the nails all red and bloody. Thin arms receding down like a tangle of white roots into the water—the water deep and dark as memory. Creedmoor recalled drowned men. Murdered men. Some women, too—mostly men in his career, but inevitably a few women, murder being no kind of exact science. All waving feebly beneath the water. Some of them beckoning. The whistling of the birds in the trees around him, the trill of frogs in the reeds had gone silent.

  This was Folk trickery. It was meant to threaten or communicate or warn or amuse or something; who knew with the Folk? It did not seem friendly, if Creedmoor was any judge.

  It was all frankly unpleasant, but he’d seen worse. He’d seen uncannier things near every day in the whispering dark behind his closed eyes when Marmion spoke to him. If this was the worst the valley and the far farthest West could offer, he’d consider himself lucky. He stared into the water until the unsettling images went away; until, in the blink of an eye, they turned back into lilies and white water froth. The birds and the frogs regained their voices, like bar pianists starting up again once the shooting’s over.