by Felix Gilman
“Come with us.”
Lowry stood, hands folded behind his back, watching young Private Carr climb a tree. An ungainly procedure. Carr huffed and panted and swore. Private Carpenter and Private Dugger and Private What’s-his-name hooted and cheered. “Go on, Carr! Forward, upward, Carr!”
Carr’s foot slipped off the edge of a branch and he nearly fell, stopping himself only by slamming his shin down hard on the wood and clutching desperately at leaves. He screamed.
“Don’t fall!” Lowry shouted. “Don’t you dare slagging fall, Carr!”
“No, sir. No, sir. Thank you, sir. No, sir.”
“You’ve got the only working telescope, Carr. Don’t you dare fall.”
Carr did his duty, despite his terror; he clambered up and up and dwindled into the distance, until Lowry could barely hear his voice. Eventually Carr heaved himself over a high enough branch, and lay outstretched, right arm wrapped round it, while with his left he reached slowly back to his belt and removed the precious ’scope. He extended it, one-handed, by shaking it, which made the branch quiver and leaves fall. He looked out across New Design.
The men waited expectantly. Spirits were high. The Linesmen had a proper enemy again, and a destination, and they stood straighter and their eyes were focused and they’d stopped talking treason. They scrupulously checked and rechecked their weapons’ mechanisms, though the general view, as Subaltern Mill kept putting it, was that the enemy were dead meat on the tracks, by which he meant that he expected no significant resistance from New Design.
It had occurred to Lowry that morning that, with Collier dead and Gauge deserted, and Thernstrom dead, too, and so on and so on, he was probably the oldest man present. He was certainly the only man present who’d ever fought the Republic—and, though he’d been only a boy at Black Cap, he’d been a clever boy, clever enough to have survived, anyway, when thousands died, and it hadn’t been lost on him that while the Republic talked a lot about virtue and honor and dignity, it fought dirty, low and vicious and cunning. . . .
Lowry grabbed the prisoner by the back of his hide shirt and yanked him to his feet. Hayworth, the boy’s name was. “Stop sniveling, boy. Tell me again: How many cannon?”
“Mr. President,” Liv said, “the Line—”
“Yes, madam. We know.”
Hobart sat behind his desk, his eyes red and his face tight and tired, wearing a patched and threadbare and ancient nightgown and cap, and over that, an old blanket. His hand ventured from the blanket to grip a wooden mug of New Design’s horrible bark-and-root coffee. He’d not slept in a long time, that much was clear, but his exhausted eyes glittered with excitement.
“We know, madam. We know. Do you think we survived the Line all those years without learning a thing or two about war? Do you think we’ve forgotten everything out here? Do you think we’ve fallen so far from our fathers’ virtue?”
“But . . .”
“We have scouts, and signals. . . . We know these forests. Regrettably it appears from reports that they have a prisoner.” He shook his head. “Very sad. Very sad. Tell me, madam, how do you know the Line is near?”
“Creedmoor is here, sir. He told me. You must—”
“Creedmoor?”
An aide leaned in close to the President’s shoulder and muttered, “The Guns’ Agent.”
“Yes,” Hobart snapped. “Yes, I know. Well, what’s in a name? They’re animals. Less than dogs: a dog will come to its name, but not a rat, or a snake. . . . Why dignify them with names?”
“Sir,” Liv said, “he is here. He’s passed your defenses.”
“We’ll see about that. He wants us to know the Line’s near, does he? He wants us to fight them for him, is that it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why he told me. He said he felt obliged to warn me. Sir, you must evacuate the town.”
“And Creedmoor says this, does he?”
“I say it. Mr. President, Creedmoor has gone for the General, you may be able to stop him still—”
“We know what to do with Creedmoor.”
“You’ve been out here too long. You’ve forgotten the Gun, the Line, what they can do. Hobart, you must save what you can—”
He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on hers. “I have been waiting for this day since I took office.” He spoke very matter-of-factly. “Each of my predecessors waited for this day. I had my differences with them, but I won’t hear a word against them on this point: No man of New Design has not waited eagerly for the day of our return to the world. Instead, the world has come to us. So much the better. We’ve raised our young men and women to be strong for this day. Today, madam, today we’ll be tested. We’ll show ourselves worthy of our fathers. We’ll show ourselves ready to return to the world and take up the grand old cause again.”
“You must save the General. Creedmoor—”
“Quite safe.”
“Then you must evacuate him. He must be saved. Send ten men into the woods with him, flee, I’ll go with them, and—”
“No. Apart from anything else, it would be bad for morale. He’ll stay here to watch our victory.”
“You idiot, Hobart. You shortsighted puffed-up monster. This will not be glorious. This will be just one more pointless horror in a history full of them. Will you at least evacuate the women and children? The Line’s not here to fight you, to root you out, you’ve been forgotten, if you hide the women and children in the oaks, they’ll be left alone, you can rebuild—”
“No. No, madam. No. There’ll be no running, not this time. We’ve kept the spark of courage and virtue alive. We’ll fight.”
“You’ve forgotten how the world you’ve left behind works. Virtue won’t save you—you’ve forgotten their weapons.”
“The alarm is being raised as we speak,” Hobart said. “Is that right?” The aide nodded. “The alarm is being raised. Do you hear it?” And indeed, there were shouts, distant dull tones of bells, the slap of feet, the rattle and thump of drums, the screech of old bent tin-whistles, and—so close and so loud that Liv started in her chair—three rifle-shots in quick succession, then a pause, then three shots again. “No running this time. We’ll wipe the stain of defeat from our splendid cause. You’ll see what we can do, madam. Mr. Hulgins, will you take her and hold her somewhere where she can’t interfere? We have work to do.”
CHAPTER 48
THE AMPLIFIER
Creedmoor rolled up his sleeves and held out his hands, empty, palms up. He turned them over, the way a swish big-city fellow might check to clean his nails—the way old Dandy Fanshawe used to check his nails—and in fact, Creedmoor noticed that his nails were prodigiously dirty. He’d not looked at them closely for a while. For weeks, he’d not been in the company of women, save Liv, who hardly counted, and he’d not thought of such things. Creedmoor thought of the way his father’s dog, that great hairy loving beast, used to come in off the fields wet with black mud and shake, all over the flagstones and the thatch. He had an urge to shake.
Instead, Creedmoor smiled and turned his hands palms-up again. “See? My hands are empty, sir. Dirty, I’ll grant you, but it’s been a hard road here. Would your men like to lower their rifles and we can talk as civilized men? . . .”
The riflemen’s leveled weapons didn’t so much as twitch. The wild old man in their center remained unsmiling, eyes fierce with hate. He shifted a little on his bad leg. It was hard for him to stand still, Creedmoor thought; he looked like he wanted to be pacing, gesturing, ranting.
The device in the old man’s hand drew all eyes to it, flicking there and back fast as blinking, tugged by its hideous gravity. The little iron hammer hung poised over the striking-plate. Only the old man’s thumb held back its fall, and that thumb trembled.
The old man said, “Your kind have quick hands. Unbuckle your gun-belt.”
“No.”
“You know what I hold in my hand?”
“My pants will fall down. This occasion deserves greater dignity th
an that. The meeting after all these years and miles of two honorable enemies! My name’s John Creedmoor. What’s yours, sir? Are you the General’s new Doctor? You look a learned man.”
“I am his Doctor, Creedmoor, and his loyal officer, and you won’t take him from my care. And you are no honorable enemy—your kind are monsters, sir, vampires, vermin. It disgusts me that you walk our streets.”
“I won’t be staying long, Doctor.”
“My name is Bradley. That’s the name of the man who caught you, Creedmoor. That’s who’ll claim credit for the kill. I’ll take your tail as trophy, you monster.”
—This Doctor’s an angry man. He lacks the good sense to keep his tongue still.
—Yes, Creedmoor, but recall the device he holds. He is dangerous.
—I daresay I could outrun its sounding and its echoes. I could be out the door before this man lets the hammer fall.
—The General is in this room, Creedmoor. Could you carry him with you so quick? You could not. And do not think of abandoning him, Creedmoor. We know how your mind works.
—You wound me, my friend. Do not injure my feelings too cruelly or I may act capriciously, out of spite. But in fact I doubt I could escape the echoes anyway. This Doctor’s finger’s quivering on the hammer as it is. . . .
—Yes, Creedmoor.
—I could walk away. Call his bluff. If I turn my back and walk away, he will not follow through on his threat, not if it would kill the General, not his precious General, light of the Republic, returned from the dead.
—Look at his eyes, Creedmoor. Smell his fear and his hate. He is not quite rational. He is very old. He’s near death anyway. We cannot be sure what he will do. We cannot take any risks.
—Stand here, then? Frozen in mutual dread? For how long? Till the sun goes cold? Till one day the Line reaches out here and we are standing on smoky grubby streets while drab crowds surge between us? Or until the Western Sea reclaims us and we all drown, and we can stand frozen together like coral? How ridiculous. How tiresome.
—Yes, Creedmoor.
—How brave he must be, to face us like this. I see no realistic course by which he might see morning. Does he know that, do you suppose? I have forgotten how men like him think.
—You were never a man like him, Creedmoor.
The Doctor spat. His wild hair shivered as in a cold wind. “Unbuckle your gun-belt, damn you!”
“I’d rather not. You’d no longer fear me, then, and our balance would be disrupted. May I ask how you knew I was here? You were awaiting me. I did not expect that. I was very quiet.”
“Do you think we fought the Line all those years without learning from them? Without taking from them?”
“Ah.”
“I personally participated in the destruction of three Engines.”
“Very well done!”
“We took what we could from their wreckage. We studied their secrets. There’s a machine they had that listens for your kind. Sniffs for your scent. We were warned of your coming.”
“Yes, yes, I know it. A black box, ’bout so high, yes, all manner of brass trumpets and breathing tubes and wire drumheads? A needle that scratches? When we talk to our weapons, our masters, their voices rise up out of a dark Lodge. Or perhaps they descend from darkness, wreathed in fire like shooting stars. Either way, there’s a tearing of the fabric, a bruising of the skin of the world, a derangement in the ether—those boxes shudder at it. To within a range of about half a mile, these days, though yours is an old model, of course. There are ways of hiding from them, but I never thought to meet one here! Oh, and to think I’d begun to dream that that voice was only in my own poor head, was only the voice of my own worse nature. Thank you, Doctor, for reminding me of the way things truly are. If it’s a madness, at least I am not alone. I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Doctor. Tell me, where were you wounded?”
“Unbuckle your gun-belt, sir. You are caught in a trap. You won’t let him die. Your masters won’t permit it. They have no loyalty to you, Creedmoor.”
“And you? Are you loyal? Would you kill your General, Doctor?”
“Sacrifices must be made. If I must kill him, I will, and he’ll live on in our cause.”
“How zealous. How unkind. How inhumane. Think of this, Doctor. Perhaps my masters don’t want the General for themselves—perhaps they only want to keep him from the Line. He holds the key to ending the Great War. Have you heard? Do you know that? Well, why would my masters want war to end? They thrive on blood and fire and the bitterness of defeat. You and I want peace because we are reasonable men, but they are neither of those things. Perhaps they’d be just as happy if he died. In which case, you have nothing with which to threaten me, and you and your men are dead, Doctor, marked for certain death. I am not threatening you; I am exploring the possibilities, to pass the time. What do you think?”
“Unbuckle your gun-belt and get on your knees.”
“No.”
Lowry adopted a reasonable tone.
“One last time, Hayworth. Where are they keeping the General?”
The prisoner trembled and turned away. Subaltern Mill reached out to slap him, but Lowry waved him away.
“Where, Hayworth? We want to take him alive. Do you understand? We want to minimize casualties.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean. The General’s dead, he died—”
“Hayworth. We will take your town. That’s just going to happen, see? We can’t leave you bastards out here scheming against us. We know you have the General and the Agent, and we will take them. But if you tell us where they are, we can do this clean.”
Hayworth bit his bloodied lip and said nothing.
“What do they teach these boys?” Lowry said. “What do they teach them?” He shoved Hayworth back to his knees and walked away, beckoning Mill after him.
“All right, Mill. Give the orders. Move up. We lay siege.”
The Linesmen formed three columns, roughly fifty men each. Ahead of them, they wheeled their cannon and motor guns, like ants carrying leaves. They came out of the oaks and across the fields toward New Design’s moat, and its walls, where Lowry now fully and calmly expected to die.
“I wanted to do this clean. I did. Have the amplifier brought to me, please, Mr. Mill.”
Mr. Hulgins led Liv out to the yard, where he stood by her side in awkward silence.
They watched torches and candles and oil lamps light up all down the streets. The sky was slowly tending to gray, and the night stars were fading. They watched men run back and forth; first bell-ringers and drum-beaters, then a few confused and halting men woken in their nightshirts or furs or stepping out naked into the night; soon more of them, some grimly silent, others muttering with fear or shouting with glee, all of them laden with spears, bows, rifles, hoes and rakes, or buckets, or timber, or bundles that Liv could not identify. The rain softly ceased and she did not remark the moment.
Mr. Hulgins was big and guileless, slow moving, decent. Back in the real world, he might have been the owner of a butcher’s shop or hardware store, most likely inherited from a sharper, harder father, or acquired by marriage to some clever woman—and he’d have been much loved by the neighborhood, and probably never have turned much of a profit, maybe lost the store to a bank, probably limped along well enough. . . . That, Liv thought, was Hulgins’s natural type. He’d been badly misplaced. A man like that had no business dying for New Design.
Hulgins noticed Liv studying him. He gave what was presumably meant to be a fierce scowl, but his eyes trembled, his chin quivered. She smiled at him.
In the yard in front of them, ten soldiers of New Design performed an impromptu drill, marching left and right, twirling and locking rifles, setting bayonets, shouting and stamping out commands and code words; then they scattered, seemingly midroutine, to the town’s four corners. Some saluted as they went; some held each other. Liv hoped all that noise and activity gave them confidence.
“This isn’t the Line itse
lf,” Liv told poor Mr. Hulgins. “This is only a tiny distant echo of the Line. They didn’t come for war. They came chasing down one man. They’ll be tired. They don’t have their vehicles, Creedmoor said. They don’t have their flying machines. There are no Engines. They are little more than ordinary men. It’s not altogether hopeless, Mr. Hulgins.”
Hulgins stared out into the yard. He shook his head slowly; Liv wasn’t sure what he was saying no to.
“Are you married, Mr. Hulgins?”
He continued to ignore her.
There was a noise. Liv had been hearing it for some seconds before she really noticed it—rising from beneath the hum of New Design’s waking, rising quickly to force out all other, softer sounds. A noise like chalk on a blackboard; like a mosquito of unusual size whining of its horrible needs; like the ringing complained of by sufferers from injuries to the brain, to Ignvir’s Lobe or Werner’s Area, or by certain schizophrenics persuaded of mysterious alarms. . . . A whine, a hiss, a crackling chaos of sound, surging and then breaking, resolving into the boom of a voice, reboant, sounding from outside the town’s walls and resounding from the sky: “. . . OF THE ANGELUS ENGINE. MEN AND WOMEN OF NEW DESIGN, THIS IS SUB-CONDUCTOR LOWRY OF THE ANGELUS ENGINE. I REPEAT: MEN AND WOMEN OF . . .”
Hulgins, Liv, three or four stragglers crossing the yard, a young woman just stepping outside her cabin—all looked up, as if expecting to see the voice thundering from the rain clouds; but the sky was empty and gray and still.
The voice was impossibly loud and distorted, but beneath the howling of electricity and static were the flat dull tones of a Linesman, sounding almost bored with his message.
“CAN YOU HEAR ME? CAN YOU? YOU CAN? YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, DON’T YOU? THE LINE’S HERE.” The voice stretched and droned into incoherence. A muttering aside as loud as a landslide—“ah, you knew it was going to happen one day, didn’t you? we reach everywhere.”
