The Half-Made World

by Felix Gilman

  “Sir—”

  “Go ahead, Mr. Collier, whatever it is you’ve got in mind, you don’t need my permission.”

  “Sir. There’s a fire.”

  Lowry looked up and blinked. He took off his spectacles, rubbed them clean, and put them back on.

  They were marching along the edge of a slope. Away in whatever direction Collier was pointing the ground fell sharply down, and over the tops of the gently shifting oaks, it was possible to make out, in the middle distance, a faint trail of black smoke.

  “A camp, sir—a cook fire. It must be the Agent.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Lowry groped at his belt for his telescope before recalling that its mechanism had broken and he’d thrown it away days ago, maybe weeks ago. He fiddled with his spectacles again. It was a credit to his discipline that it took him only a minute to pull himself together, push his daydreams about death and duty to one side, and order Collier to divide what was left of the men into four groups of roughly equal size, and to surround the camp.

  The smoke arose from a clearing in the oaks. Lowry’s forces surrounded the objective with suspicious ease—either, Lowry thought, the Agent’s senses were dulled out in the wilderness, or he was luring Lowry into a trap, or possibly he was just so slagging arrogant, he didn’t care if they did surround him.

  Ordinarily Lowry would attack at a distance, with mortars and rockets and bombs, but of course, that was impossible without killing the General, too. The only alternative was to rush the enemy, bury him in waves of men. Lowry sent Collier in with the first wave, in the hope that he’d get killed, which would save Lowry the bother of stamping out Collier’s tendencies toward mutiny. As it happened, it wasn’t the Agent in the clearing at all, but Collier still got taken care of.

  In the clearing were two men, standing to either side of a fire, over which they’d spitted one of the horrible misshapen deer of the forests. They’d heard the Linesmen’s approach too late to run, but in plenty of time to draw their weapons. They were armed with bows, like something out of ancient history, and they’d have been completely comical had they not fired off two deadly quick arrows, catching Collier in the throat and Mr. Shuttle in the shoulder. The Linesmen returned fire before they could reload.

  One survived.

  He’d been shot in the leg and had fallen unconscious. Lowry had him bandaged, tied up, and slapped awake.

  Lowry said, “Explain yourself.”

  The prisoner looked up in shock and confusion. He looked from Lowry’s face to the faces of Lowry’s men. He studied their uniforms. His eyes widened in horror.

  “Linesmen.”

  “Yes,” Lowry said.

  The prisoner was a young man; tall, thin, wiry. He wore buckskin and fur. His dead companion had been an older fellow, forty or more, who wore the remains of a patched and tattered red jacket that filled Lowry with loathing and dread. Ancient and faded though it was, it was unmistakably the uniform of a soldier of the Red Valley Republic. It brought back all Lowry’s horrible buried childhood memories of the fighting at Black Cap; and fuck that.

  “Explain yourself,” he repeated.

  “I . . . Linesmen?” The young man screwed his face up into an expression of stubborn courage. “I will never tell you—”

  Lowry hit him and he moaned.

  “Please, sir, I don’t—”

  “What are you? Deserters? Refugees?”

  “We fled, we fled after the—”

  “After the defeat. After we drove you from the world. You ran rather than be ground under the wheels. Right. Not just you, though, is it? Not just you and the old man. Don’t, don’t lie to me, it’s obvious—what else would you refuse to tell me? You’ll tell me in the end.”

  “Please, we—”

  “Not much fight in you. Not as much fight as I’d have expected—you were vicious bastards when I was a boy. I remember.”

  He glanced over at the dead man again. That uniform! Lowry shivered as he recalled nights at Black Cap Valley crawling through stinking ditches laying barbed wire, under fire from the Republic’s rifles, knowing that at any moment the Republic’s arrogant cavalry might sweep past, and they thought of themselves as virtuous, but they were not too virtuous to ride down children of the Line. . . .

  “Are you here to meet the Agent?”

  “What?”

  “The Agent,” Lowry said. “Creedmoor. Your General. Creedmoor’s working for you?”

  “Who? What? I don’t—”

  “Shut up. Creedmoor’s working for you; either he’s betrayed his masters or you’ve thrown in with them. And you have your General back. And you’ll have his weapon, soon enough. And now you want to start it all again, and it was hard enough to put you bastards down the first time. Right? Don’t lie. So where is he? Where have you taken him?”

  CHAPTER 40

  A MACHINE THAT WOULD GO OF ITSELF

  Liv’s new acquaintances introduced themselves—thus becoming, their red-jacketed leader said, not captors, but friends. Red-jacket’s name was William Morton; Captain Morton to his men, but William—he allowed, with a yellow-toothed smile and a stiff elderly bow—to the good lady from out East.

  The other two were called Blisset and Singleton, and they were brothers-in-law. Blisset’s sister was Singleton’s wife. Mary, her name was; Liv would meet her back at town, Captain Morton assured her. Blisset was the fair one, Singleton the dark one, unless it was the other way around, which was possible; Liv was so delighted to meet another human being that it hardly mattered what they said, and she had trouble paying attention. She had a strong urge to tell them about her research or to ask if they knew the latest Faculty gossip.

  “What town, William?”

  “. . . a fine woman, Mary is, a pillar of the community, a very virtuous—I beg your pardon, ma’am, we don’t see many strangers out here. In fact, we see none at all, ever. The town is New Design, ma’am. We have a library and high walls and productive mills and broad fields and a waterwheel on the river, all cut out of the oaks in accordance with the plans of wiser heads than mine. Two days’ brisk walk northwest of here, if you and your friend are ready to travel. Are you and he alone here?”

  “Yes and no. You are from the Red Valley Republic?”

  “Yes, and I suppose no. The Republic is no more. We fled out here twenty years ago, after all was lost at Black Cap, before the Line could destroy the last of us. We left the world behind; we took what seemed most precious in the Republic with us. Mr. Blisset and Mr. Singleton were only boys then, and I was a younger man and didn’t mind the walk, which I’m sure you know as well as anyone is quite formidable.”

  “Extraordinary. I know you only from history books. This is rather like meeting something from a children’s story, Captain Morton. An elf, perhaps, or a troll.”

  “William, ma’am.”

  “My friend here is . . . Take a look at my friend’s face, William.”

  Morton smiled politely and crouched down by the General’s side. “He is very old,” Morton said. “But I’m no young buck myself. Is he unwell?”

  “Yes. Do you know who he is? Imagine his beard trimmed, imagine him twenty years younger, imagine him—”

  Morton leapt to his feet. Singleton and Blisset stepped to his side, drawing their weapons, and he waved at them and said, “No. No. Down. It—” Tears ran down his cheeks. He half-started to salute, then turned to Liv and said, “Is it? Is it him?”

  “So I’ve been told. I was beginning to have doubts.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The Line’s noisemakers. Years ago now, I suppose. I am his Doctor.”

  “You brought him back to us. . . .”

  “Until five minutes ago, I had no idea you existed. I did not come here of my own free will, and nor did he. We were kidnapped by an Agent of the Gun, and fled out here with an army of the Line in pursuit.”

  Morton kept clenching and unclenching his fists. Singleton and Blisset approached slowly and
knelt by the General as if at an altar. The General’s eyes wandered all around the clearing, showing no interest in anyone in it.

  “The enemy,” Morton said. “Even out here. After twenty years.”

  “What are your numbers in New Design, Captain?”

  “Enough, ma’am. Enough. Singleton, Blisset!”

  The two young men wordlessly lifted the General between them, each taking one arm. The General’s head lolled on Blisset’s shoulder and he drooled. Blisset’s expression was blank.

  “You are both under our protection, ma’am.”

  “They will come for him. Creedmoor first. Then the Line; I believe we’ve lost them for now, but they will find us. Are you sure, Captain Morton?”

  “Quite sure, ma’am.”

  “Then lead the way.”

  The General whined in the back of his throat, long and high, like a mosquito, a note that rose slowly and died slowly, while Morton’s smile stiffened and creaked like old canvas, and for want of anything better to do, Morton turned to the General and saluted.

  Blisset and Singleton carried the General away under the oaks, and Liv and Morton went behind them.

  New Design—the name was a classical allusion, Morton explained, a phrase of one of the ancient philosophers. Liv congratulated him: A soldier and a scholar! Rare these days. To carve a new community in the wilderness, one must be both, Morton said; though he would allow that he did not know precisely which philosopher the allusion came from. Liv told him. She told him a great deal; they talked about the news, about philosophy, about New Design, about the lands to the east, about the weather. She tried not to say too much, to keep her secrets, to stay in control, but she couldn’t; she was simply too exhilarated to be talking to another more-or-less ordinary human being again. Unguarded, she said almost everything that came into her head; Morton listened guilelessly and nodded, and told her the news from New Design, quite eagerly, proud of his remote little town.

  Morton’s little party were on a scouting mission. The beast of the forests had been coming north at nights, raiding New Design’s livestock.

  (Not-quite-deer and almost-turkey: that was the best of the local stock. What Morton wouldn’t give for a decent mutton!)

  In the last year, the beast had killed three herdsmen and a guard. In the year before that, two boys and a schoolteacher. In the year before that . . .

  Eyewitnesses said the beast was like one of the oaks, come to life, bristling with claws in place of leaves, feeding on blood, not rain; that it was like a great serpent but also like a bear, or a man, or a machine. It must have come east from the farthest-out west, where things did not yet hold to their proper forms, and that was all Morton would say about that to a lady.

  The mission of Morton’s party—and there were other scouting parties out in the forest, to the west and east—was to track the beast’s movements back to find its lair. They weren’t planning to engage it; once they’d found the monster’s lair, all of New Design’s fighting men would come back with torches and bows and the few precious rifles.

  Morton’s party had stopped at the stream to refill their canteens, and in hope that the monster might have watered there itself, and that they might pick up its trail. They’d seen Liv there by the pool; they’d thought at first she was one of their own, one of the women of New Design, somehow lost. Then they’d wondered if she was some shifter or sylph or naiad, hence the bows at the ready, for which Morton apologized.

  “Creedmoor is hunting your serpent-monster,” Liv said.

  “Maybe he’ll save us the trouble, then. Maybe the monster will take care of him for us. Either way, we had best head home.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to Liv that Creedmoor might be overmatched. She felt a sudden vindictive thrill.

  They walked for three days. The forest remained unchanging. The oaks remained serene. They came across more of the mutilated deer, the savaged trees, but the monster’s spoor was old, the corpses rotten; nevertheless, they hurried on past.

  They came to New Design at noon.

  It had high walls made of logs of solid oak, painted with red pitch. Before the walls, there was a wide and waterless black moat. Tree-tall wooden watchtowers overlooked the moat. On the other side of it stood a town of low log huts. Thin trails of woodsmoke rose into the sky. Turkey wandered the muddy tracks of the streets, and the deerlike animals whined and honked uneasily in their pens.

  The men and women of New Design dressed in furs and buckskins, or simple worn shifts, or threadbare scraps of ancient uniforms; they dressed like border bandits, but they held themselves like honest folk.

  No single house stood above the others; nothing, save the watchtowers, exceeded a single story. Nothing was ornamented. The impression was of a rigorous and severe democracy and fraternity—though later Liv would wonder if the absence of stairs was more due to a shortage of metals and nails and competent carpenters.

  “New Design,” Morton said. He waved an arm at it.

  Morton turned to the General and stared into the man’s blank eyes. “We built it in your honor, sir. That you should come to it at last in such a state . . .” And he broke down and sobbed. Singleton and Blisset stood by, pale and awkward, while the townsfolk came slowly over the moat’s wooden bridge and gathered round.

  Liv stuck close to Singleton and Blisset as the townfolk called out, “Who is this? Morton, what is this?”

  Singleton gathered himself, clapped for attention, and shouted, “Hey! Hey! Stand back! Show some respect! This is the man! This is General Enver! He is! I swear it, I swear it by the fucking Charter! Stand back!”

  “Do you know what you’ve brought us, ma’am? Can you understand?”

  Liv admitted that she could not, that she was a little confused. The Mayor cleared his throat and tried to explain. . . .

  After the battle of Black Cap Valley, many of the Republic’s surviving forces deserted; the true believers did not. The true believers fought on against the Line, though they knew they were doomed, and every battle after that was a rout, and soon they weren’t even really fighting battles, but striking like bandits from the forests and hills; the true believers fought on because the Republic wasn’t like the other petty border states and fiefdoms and kingdoms and freetowns and the like. It was not a mere organ of power—this the little town’s Mayor Hobart, who was also President Hobart of the Republic, explained to Liv as she sat on the bare wooden chairs of his bare wooden office—it was the instantiation of an idea. The idea was a good idea. It gathered new lives around it. It outlasted mere mortal lives. The idea was a machine that would go of itself.

  For the content of that idea Hobart referred Liv to the Charter, which she could see, if she made an appointment, and if she promised to handle the old paper carefully—they had no paper mills out here.

  Like everything else in New Design, the Mayoral and Presidential office was made of oak, unvarnished; worn smooth in places by years of handling, rough and knotty everywhere else. One wall was lined with old books—works of military history and political philosophy. The other rough walls were enlivened with the red rising-sun flag of the Republic, and the bloody black flag of those who fought on after the Black Cap disaster, and a variety of battle standards. All were moth-eaten, singed, bloodied, torn and faded, and now, with the passage of decades, reduced to mere decoration.

  The Mayor—and President of a Republic that was in merely geographical terms no larger than the one little town, but of far greater moral and world-historical significance, he said, far greater—was a young man. Handsome. Tall and clear eyed. Bushy black beard on a strong jaw. He wore a suit; he was the only man in town Liv had seen in a suit. It was perhaps the only such article for a hundred miles. A quite smart dining suit, though very old, of an unfashionable cut and threadbare in places. A little short in the leg. An ordinary item of clothing back in the world; out here, it was a badge of office as splendid as any king’s scepter.

  “I’m not a phi los o pher,” Hobart told
her. “We’ve got ’em out here. Philosophers, that is. Fine as any in the world, if not finer. Good men. But I’m a practical man, which is what’s needed now. In fact, practicality is, as I’ve always understood it, a fundamental underlying principle of the Charter. But I’m not the man to explain it to you. To give you the deep thinking.”

  Hobart wore a gold pocket watch, not unlike the one around Liv’s neck. Like Liv’s, Hobart’s watch was dead, and its hands were still, though unlike her own it was silent.

  “True believers!” Hobart banged the table. “My father among them, rest his bones.” He gestured out the window. There was a graveyard of bare wooden poles out among the oaks on the south side of town. “The true believers fought on. General Enver fought on! Harried the Line however he could. My father was with him. At the battle of Wolf’s Drift, he lost a leg and a hand. My father, that is. Came back to my mother in bloody bandages. Hobbling. Done with fighting and he was luckier than most. Brought this bloody battle standard with him.”

  The President held the cloth of a red flag gently in his fingers. He’d quite clearly told this story many times before. His voice boomed and was somehow both conversational and theatrical; he was a good speaker. As Liv had been led through New Design, someone had pointed out two broad oak stumps in the town’s heart: Speaker’s Corner and the Whipping Post. She could picture the President standing up on Speaker’s Corner hollering about battle standards and blood and noble forefathers.

  Something in Hobart’s confident manner slipped as he fingered the threadbare cloth and for a moment he looked—ashamed? He turned back to Liv and set an expression of grave resolve.

  “The General? He kept right on fighting. Deeper into the forests, hiding, striking where he could. My father dreamed of going back to him, crippled as he was. I dreamed of joining him, though I was only a child. But we heard the news. The victories grew smaller and smaller. The rump of the Republic’s forces dwindled and dwindled. And one day, the news stopped coming and we knew the General was dead. Lost in the mountains somewhere. Dead in a lonely place with his last few men. Or so we believed, though it seems we were wrong! Quite wrong! But we believed it at the time. I don’t think we were wrong to believe it even now. You can’t fight forever. You can’t let the fighting become everything. A man must build as well. But where was there a place for us in the world? Our lands run over by the Line, those bastard black Stations rising over the hills. Or falling into banditry and chaos, seduced by the Gun. The Republic was built on certain principles, Mrs. Alverhuysen. I don’t know if those principles are widely understood all the way back in the northeast, in, ah . . .”