The Revolutions
Page 44
“But of course,” she said, “we were very young then.”
“He must have been quite a fellow,” Merriweather said.
“He is,” she said.
“Oh. I thought—that is, ah, I didn’t know he was alive—I guess I don’t know who we’re talking about, ma’am.”
“Oh, no.” She smiled distantly. “Oh, no, no, Mr Merriweather.” She didn’t seem inclined to explain further. He supposed perhaps she was getting confused. Or perhaps the dead man seemed alive to her now; surely she expected to meet him again soon.
Merriweather was a Baptist, himself, and he guessed he believed in an afterlife. He didn’t really know. One of those things folks couldn’t see clearly in their own minds until they started to get old.
“The pearly gates,” he said, to fill the silence. “Ah-ha. The angelic host with their wings and harps. Of course.”
“Wings, Mr Merriweather? That would be something to look forward to, wouldn’t it?”
“Hmm, hmm,” he agreed.
“Have you ever thought of writing, Mr Merriweather?”
“Stories, you mean? Oh, no, ma’am. Don’t have the head for it. Couldn’t keep all the names straight. I write a mean will, though.” Then he blushed, and stammered. “I mean, a lease, or something.” But she hadn’t taken offense, or even noticed.
“I could tell you a story or two, Mr Merriweather.”
“I bet you could, ma’am. By God, I bet you could.”
* * *
It seemed like the next thing Merriweather knew—business boomed and time flew and his wife and his law partner both thought he was spending altogether too much time on that old woman, who, after all, was just a crazy old recluse who’d once written some children’s books—anyhow, the next thing he knew, he was getting a call from his friend the Chief of Police to say that the author was dead. A fire had destroyed most of her property overnight. There were clear signs of arson. In confidence, the Chief of Police informed Merriweather that it was quite probable that the author herself had set the blaze. Virtually everything was gone. A tragedy. She’d left $250,000 to Merriweather, along with a box of papers which she’d placed in the care of the post-office.
“By God,” Merriweather said. He held out the telephone at arm’s length and stared at it, as if it had appeared in his hand by magic.
The author herself had not perished in the blaze, but had been found lying out under the sky on the low hill at the southern corner of her land. She wore a simple white shift; beneath it she was skin and bone. Her arms were folded. There was frost in her hair—not remarkable, given the cold—and some weird pinkish flowers. The flowers blew away when the firefighters moved the body, and they couldn’t say what they had been—roses maybe. She was dead of exposure. Who could blame her, said the Chief of Police; it beat waiting for the cancer.
When Merriweather visited the author in the morgue, on his way to pick up the papers from the post-office, there was a photographer there from New York. They both agreed that she had a remarkably beatific smile for a corpse, and the photographer had seen a lot of corpses in his line of work. That evening Merriweather drove out past the house, but there was nothing to see from the road but a ruin, which still seemed to give off a few ghostly wisps of smoke. Behind it, the sky was warm violet and the stars were coming out.
TOR BOOKS BY FELIX GILMAN
The Half-Made World
The Rise of Ransom City
The Revolutions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Felix Gilman has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award and the Locus Award for best new writer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Thunderer, Gears of the City, The Half-Made World, which was listed by Amazon as one of the Ten Best SF/F novels of 2010, and The Rise of Ransom City. He lives with his family in New York City.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE REVOLUTIONS
Copyright © 2014 by Felix Gilman
All rights reserved.
Cover art and design by W. Staehle
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3717-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3136-0 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466831360
First Edition: April 2014