by Felix Gilman
—Creedmoor.
. . . formed in it, and his head swelled with blood and his sinuses burned.
—Creedmoor.
—Go away.
—We have fought our way across a great silent void to find you, Creedmoor. Nothing here echoes with our voices, and so we were blind and lost. We suffered. We came to save you.
—Go away.
—We know what you have been thinking. The servants of the Enemy are loyal; why are ours so ungrateful? But we forgive you anyway. We have always loved you, Creedmoor.
—You have?
—Of course, Creedmoor. Have we not always treated you well? Have we not—?
—You’re terrified, aren’t you? You’re desperate. This is grotesque. Are you about to grovel to me?
The sky lightened to gray, and the stars withdrew into the deep distance. Creedmoor’s left leg began to itch and ache. A shot of agony ran up his spine, but then his master reached in and firmly pressed it back down.
—You have always been our favorite servant, Creedmoor. Do not die. Do not suffer unnecessarily. We will never leave you again.
His shoulder wrenched itself back into its socket, making his whole body spasm. His bones ground together and reknit.
—I was never anybody’s favorite anything. My own mother regarded me as an embarrassing error.
—You were cunning, Creedmoor. And brave. And deadly. And proud. And fierce. And—
—You need me.
—Yes, Creedmoor. We need you. There is no one else here. The Line will take the General and his secret and we will die. Think of all we have given you.
—I wanted none of it.
—Of course you did.
His right ankle twisted back into shape, and suddenly his right leg was full of pain, and he screamed.
—Stand.
He pulled himself slowly to his feet. His legs trembled beneath him. His right arm was still limp and heavy as lead.
—There. Well done, Creedmoor.
—Fuck you.
—We promise we will not hold your insolence against you, once we have the General back. On our honor.
Creedmoor hefted his right arm with his left, and rubbed feeling back into the fingers.
—You thought foolish thoughts while we were gone. But no more. You have no choice; you never did.
—No. I suppose not.
—Go save the General, Creedmoor.
—And the woman, of course.
—If you like.
CHAPTER 45
THE DANCE
On the fourth day, Captain Morton introduced Liv to a young man—well, not so young, his sandy hair was receding over his sunburned scalp and he was tending to middle-aged plumpness—but well favored nonetheless, and charmingly shy and quiet. “His name’s William Warren,” Morton said, “the Second, after a fine father, who fought with me at the Battle of . . . but that’s beside the point, now, isn’t it? Our Bill the Younger’s a fine fellow in his own right, and near enough the best carpenter we have. . . .” Warren stood there all the while, on Morton’s doorstep, fidgeting his callused and broad-fingered hands. “Came here as a mere babe, didn’t you, young Mr. Warren? There’s hardly a buildin’ in this town he hasn’t done a hard day’s work on. Anything you want to know about New Design, you ask him. I’ll be busy for a spell, ma’am, with—ah, you know. Come in, come in!”
Warren shrugged, and smiled at her, and extended a hand, saying, “Perhaps you would prefer to come for a walk, madam?”
Even after a full turn around the town, hand in hand, and after a series of eager stuttering attempts at conversation on Warren’s part, Liv was still unable to be sure of his intentions.
“This here,” Warren said, “was built in the ninth year of New Design, as we count it, by Captain Pratt, to be a home for . . .”—patting the logs of yet another cabin. And so on all up and down the muddy streets as the sun sank westward over the mountains, toward the wild sea beyond. Warren shone with love for every rough-hewn log of his town. He seemed to have no other topics of conversation—he quizzed Liv on the world outside, politely but without comprehension or apparent enthusiasm.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Liv decided that the real nature of Warren’s intentions made no difference. Either he was assigned to spy on her, and his clumsiness was a ruse, in which case, she saw no reason to make his task easy for him; or he was, after a somewhat rustic fashion, attempting to court her—in which case, she was tempted, briefly, she would not deny it, but he seemed so young. That is, although they’d been born, it seemed, within a handful of years of each other, as best as they could reckon, Warren was so unscarred by his timeless years in New Design that Liv could not quite see him as fully a person, and it seemed cruel and somehow shameful to interfere with his blameless existence. So she squeezed his hand gently and let go of it, and told him that she was, she regretted to say, very tired, and at the mercy of a nervous headache that made further conversation impossible, and she left him standing alone in the mud, a forlorn expression on his guileless face, under the lengthening shadow of the logging mill on the west side of town.
The next day, they held a dance, and Liv saw Warren again.
The dance was apparently a weekly affair, held on one of the fallow north fields, and attended with great solemnity and deliberate good cheer. The old danced slowly in the central ring, and the young whirled around them. The choreography was elaborate—mathematically and topologically complex, the work of clever thinkers with too much time on their hands. Morton explained that dance, like sport, like war, built strong bodies in the young, built a sense of community and respect and fair play, and that the rings symbolized . . . oh, symbolized something; Liv’s attention wandered. She saw Warren again, but across the field, in a haze of lanterns and torches, laughing with the other men of the town, and she had to concede that he was not altogether unappealing. But then a group of boys, arm in arm, red faced and laughing, wheeled sidestepping across the field, and when she could see again, he was gone.
Perhaps he’d joined the dance. Liv had tried to step in, at Morton’s gentle urging, but was unable to find her footing. The dance was unfamiliar and strenuously athletic, and she’d nearly fallen. Instead, Liv sat with Morton’s young wife, Sally, who was herself unable to dance because the baby within her was acting up, and she was suddenly prone to sickness. Liv had no particular advice to give, but the young woman was in some distress, and she did her best to be kind. While holding Sally’s sweating hand and murmuring, There, there, Liv looked for Warren, but she never saw him again.
On the fifth day, they held a referendum.
New Design’s men and women lined up on the long hard benches of the meeting hall. The hall’s roof was a high-peaked lace of timbers, open to the sky. Around noon, a cold sleeting rain blew across the town. None of them flinched. They sat straight-backed, listening to Alderman Merrill’s long ponderous speech as the rain slicked their hair black over their scalps.
Merrill’s subject was property, and taxation, and points of high principle concerning both—though as far as Liv was aware, there was no property in New Design, and no taxes. Indeed, she’d seen no money at all, and had imagined New Design to be communistic, after the manner of the prophets in the ancient texts. She decided that Merrill’s economics was more aspirational than empirical. He had the look of a dreamer, in a small quiet way.
When Merrill was done—to measured applause—he trudged back across the muddy floor to his place on the benches. Alderman Polk took the podium, and the townsfolk listened just as gravely to him in his turn. He wore spectacles, one glass of which was cracked, the other empty, long vanished. Nevertheless, he bore himself with dignity. Liv couldn’t comprehend his subject at all.
The Aldermen of the town were also members of the Assembly of the Republic. They spoke for both offices. The serious young man on Liv’s left and the serious old man on her right both explained this to her.
Young Mr. Waite, of the Smilers, spoke briefl
y, extempore, on the theme of What it says about us that we’re able to have this meeting in the face of what we’re all agreed would be worrying news—yes, it would—if we were the kind to give in to worry; but instead we should be very proud. The rain darkened his fine blond hair and slicked it down over his scalp. His smile only widened as he spoke, till he put Liv in mind of a ventriloquist’s dummy. He sat down amid applause, and the Secretary of Measures and Motions brought business to a start.
Issues tabled for the day: the hunting of the beast—should they continue? Or change tactics? The need for new irrigation on the south fields. Sally Morton stood and haltingly delivered a speech on the importance of infant education, which appeared to end without a point. A Mr. Dilworth’s proposed adjustment to the rules of parliamentary cloture was soundly defeated, as if he had proposed a dirty thing, and Dilworth himself slunk off to angry stares.
Lastly, they discussed what was to be done with the General, what was to be done with these rumors of approaching enemies. The crowd shifted eagerly, tensely. President Hobart took the podium. The young man on Liv’s left stood and clapped furiously. The old man on her right sat in wary silence.
Captain Morton sat two rows in front of Liv, sticking out in his red cavalry jacket among the gray brown of his neighbors like a peacock among hens. He did not clap. He sat very stiffly. Sally held his arm and leaned close to him.
Liv stood. There was a hush around her.
“President Hobart. The Line will find us here soon. Creedmoor will find us. You must evacuate the women and children. You have forgotten what the Line is like, what their weapons are like. You must make an alliance with Creedmoor, against the Line, for the sake of—”
The crowd roared with disgust, drowning her out.
Liv examined the President’s face as he scanned the crowd—arms outstretched, hands clutching the podium. He smiled at his people. He waited for them to quiet down.
President Hobart’s eyes met Liv’s. He leaned down and whispered in his aide’s ear.
“President Hobart, I propose that—”
A young man put his hand gently on her arm and said, “Ma’am.”
Soon Liv was politely removed from the meeting hall. The aide escorted her across town—in apologetic silence—then left her, jogging back to the meeting briskly, his back receding in the rain, his hand on his cap.
Liv was alone—which was for the best, since she wasn’t sure she could speak. She felt quite stunned. After weeks and weeks of reading the history of the Republic, daydreaming of it, conversing with its fallen General—after all that, to find it, preserved as in a museum—and to be shut out—it was baffling.
They had refused her help. They did not want her advice. She was of no importance, powerless to affect her fate. Her safety depended entirely on Hobart’s wisdom, by which she was not impressed.
She wandered the town, sometimes shaking her head, sometimes smiling. She went west and quickly reached the walls, and the moat, and the guard towers. She waved to a young man high overhead, who held a rifle. He waved back. He wore a bright red officer’s cap. His father’s?
Beyond the moat, the oaks pressed in. A cool and inviting darkness. Liv considered fleeing into it. Abandoning the General. Creedmoor might not look for her now. Sharp mountains rose beyond the forest, purple in the west. The sun was starting to set behind them, making the snow on their peaks a shining brazen rim. The rain, still falling, thin and cold, glowed in the failing light. That morning, the impossible western sun had risen blazing from behind those mountains.
Liv took two steps closer to the bridge, and a young man stepped in front of her, blocking her path. She recognized the face—the unfortunate witch’s wen on his nose. Was it Blisset or Singleton? She’d not seen them since they found her in the woods. He remembered her, of course. He shook his head. He would not meet her eyes.
“You are quite right, sir,” she said. “It is late for a walk in the woods. I might get lost in the dark.”
“Quite right, ma’am.”
“You’re very kind to your guests.”
Liv turned back. She walked New Design’s muddy streets. They were laid out in a finely planned wheel, which she had to concede was rational and elegant. It stood—Morton had explained—for some principle of order or organization that the Republic held dear.
The lights were coming on in the windows. Oil lamps or hearth fires, according to the stature of the houses. A golden haze in the evening rain. In Liv’s mind, New Design was a rolling wheel broken off from a beautiful gigantic machine, some glittering clockwork of government, spinning free, diminished and alone, finally falling here, far from its parent. In a ditch. In the dirt. In a quiet distant field. Still spinning, these little lives caught in its spokes. The General had built to last.
This place was a miracle! Liv felt a sudden affection for it. It was a shabby miracle, no doubt, a tired miracle, its people falling into smallness and fixed ways—but it was the last of something splendid. Each of these people had been touched by greatness; they had seen a finer world.
As she idled through the rainy streets, Liv dreamed of saving them. A speech, perhaps? A plan, a scheme, some ingenious reversal or stratagem that might turn back the Line. Or somehow leading them farther into the West, to safety . . .
For the General’s sake, they had to survive.
For the world’s sake, they had to survive. If they never returned from the West, if the world never knew of them, so what? The world was a finer place while this dream persisted.
Liv passed by Dr. Bradley’s house. There was a long low cabin beside it, where the hospital beds were. Captain Morton had pointed it out to her. It was every inch a soldier’s camp hospital. There were three men loitering outside the canvas-curtained door, two with rifles. All with spears and swords.
Liv stood across the darkening street from them. Her hair and clothes were quite drenched now, but she’d long since ceased to care. Cold had not killed her yet. The dark-haired young man with the finest and most silver-filigreed rifle caught her eye, then snapped his head straight again and pointedly ignored her.
The General was there, of course. Held in secret and locked tightly away like a treasure the town didn’t know what to do with. It made her think of those fairy tales in which a stranger brings a chest of gold, or a goose that lays golden eggs, or a wondrous machine that weaves invisible threads, or a spirit that answers every question put to it and knows every hidden secret, or what have you, into a simple village not prepared for such intrusions of the wondrous or the significant; tales in which the peasants’ greed for the strange treasure would lead them to idleness, to anger, to violence, to wives poisoning husbands, to sons murdering fathers out in the empty fields; and in which, always, the headman, or mayor, or priest, would lock the treasure away, or bury it in the hills, hoping to bring peace again, and sometimes that would work, and sometimes it wouldn’t.
Liv wondered if the President came to visit the General, at night, in secret, to stare at his blank ancient face. She wondered about Woodbury, about Morton, about Peckham, about Warren—who was privy to the secret?
Liv could hardly blame them for trying to hide their plans from her. She’d brought their hero to them, yes, but not for their sake, not for any sane reason at all. She’d brought him ruined. She’d come out of nowhere. And above all else, she had come in the company of an Agent of the Gun. She was tainted by her association with Creedmoor. She could hardly fault them for feeling that way; she sometimes felt that way herself.
Where was Creedmoor? Had the monster got him, or the Line? Had his masters reclaimed him? She felt very alone.
CHAPTER 46
CREEDMOOR IN THE SHADOWS
—They’re gone.
—You should not have left them alone. But we will forgive you if you find the old man again.
Creedmoor came running, cursing, and crashing through branches that whipped his face and tore his blood-soaked clothes. He knew when he was half a mile away from the
clearing where he’d left her that Liv was gone, and she’d taken the old man with her. Their scent had gone stale—and there were strangers.
—Not the Line. I know their smell. The red men.
—Who, Creedmoor?
—What the Folk woman called them.
—We forgive you for talking to her, Creedmoor. Nothing matters but finding the General. Run faster.
The voice in his head was on the verge of hysteria now. Beneath its calm flat tones there was an echo of shrieking. If it didn’t hurt so much, he would have found it funny.
He burst out into the empty clearing.
—Gone. Creedmoor. You went trophy-hunting, you abandoned your charge.
—I left him with Liv.
—The woman has betrayed us. You should have killed her.
—Maybe.
—If we find her, you must kill her.
—We’ll see.
Creedmoor left the clearing behind.
—Faster. Take to the heights.
So he rose into the high crown of the nearest oak, ascending in slow forceful leaps from branch to branch, through the cold canopy of leaves, standing at last on a single narrow uppermost limb, a green sprig, wrist thin, which he willed to bear his weight. He looked out over the green world, east, back the way he’d come.
—They’re coming. Faster, now. Closer.
—Yes, Creedmoor.
—We had a week or more’s lead on them when we went hunting that serpent. How did they come so close?
The Linesmen weren’t in sight yet, and there was no stink of them on the wind—stale sweat, grime, coal dust, fear and shame—but Creedmoor could hear them, the thudding of their flat feet, the wheezing of their fat throats, the rattle and dull clank of their rifles and bombs. And the treetops shivered with their passing below.
