The Half-Made World (15 page)

Sub-Invigilator (First) Morningside assigned Lowry to ride in the back of the Signal Corps’ second truck, alongside the backup telegraph machinery and the senior officers of the Expeditionary Force’s Signal Corps. A Subaltern thrust a stack of files into Lowry’s hands.

The files were hastily prepared. The machinery was all brand new. Brass sounders and copper wires and bulbous vacuum tubes were still polished and glittering. Rows and rows of keys rattled with what sounded like enthusiasm as the truck bounced and rolled down dirt roads.

The senior officers of the Signal Corps were named Scale, Ditch, Benson, Collier, and Porter. Lowry introduced himself curtly, then sat in silence on the hard wooden bench and read the files.

THE “HOUSE DOLOROUS”: INTRODUCTION

As of Year 292 at the latest, reports place the General, see principally B.140.1–B.140.310, at a hospital on the farthest northwestern Rim, known as “The House Dolorous” aka “The Doll House,” hereinafter “The Hospital.” See C.12.21.iv–x. These reports are considered of uncertain but generally actionable reliability. See C.12.34.iii.

The following report on the Hospital has been prepared in haste and is of limited reliability.

The Hospital was founded in Year 281 by one Winston Howell II, father of the Hospital’s present director, and former resident of the town of Greenbank, see L.170.6. The Hospital has a very substantial endowment, provided primarily by Howell personally, out of the profits of the various silver-mining enterprises along the western rim with which his family was associated. The Hospital’s name is apparently derived from a romantic poem popular in the southern Baronies, and is of no significance.

Howell II claimed in a Y285 memoir that he founded the Hospital after a dream in which a number of Hillfolk appeared to him in his office in Greenbank and led him into the hills to the Hospital’s future location. See infra 4. This account cannot be verified. See infra 5.

The Hospital takes in the wounded from various conflicts over much of the western rim. A number of jurisdictions pay subscriptions to the Hospital to relieve them of their defectives, and this supplements the Hospital’s endowment. The Hospital maintains a strict policy of neutrality, and refuses equally to do business with us or the enemy.

Its staff have few notable medical qualifications. However, the Hospital claims to be located on a site sacred to a spirit of the Hillfolk, which has healing properties. The extent of those healing properties cannot be verified, but the spirit appears to exist. It is most likely one of the minor aberrations that occur from time to time on the western rim, where human settlement is still recent and the conditions of creation unfixed. Cf. the “Red Plains Dust Devil,” N.7.1, the “White Rock Werewolf,” N.7.3, and the “Logris River Weeping Angel,” N.7.4. Like them, it is likely soon enough to dissipate under the pressure of its internal contradictions. In the mean time, however, it is capable of significant extensions of physical force in defense of the boundaries, personnel, and inmates of the Hospital. According to eyewitness accounts, see infra 10, it remains generally dormant, unless violence is used within its zone of influence, at which point it responds to the perpetrator with overwhelming force.

In addition, the staff of the Hospital are reported to be intensely conscious of their security and defensive of their neutrality, and while their capacity for physical resistance is negligible, their irrational mindset is likely to complicate attempts at infiltration or negotiation. See infra 6–7.

In the event that it should be necessary to execute the General (or other inmate), aerial bombardment is advised. In the event that it should be necessary to extract any such individual alive, nonviolent means, though challenging, will be necessary. See infra 8.

The Expeditionary Force set up a temporary camp two miles south of Greenbank, on a broad expanse of rock and dirt. Weird rock formations towered overhead, fluted and curving like gigantic red flowers. They gave the camp a certain amount of shade from the constant oppressive sun, not to mention high lookout points, but they were hideous, and Lowry would happily have dynamited them flat.

They circled the trucks. They sent out the Heavier-Than-Air Vessels to scout in a wide radius. They unloaded and set up the fixed guns and the telegraph machinery, which instantly began to clatter and buzz with messages, the gist of which was
FASTER. FASTER. CLOSE THE NET.

Sub-Invigilator (First) Morningside, who turned out to be a thoroughly insufferable prick, tasked Lowry with organizing the distribution of the men of the Signal Corps and their listening devices to each of the towns that ringed the Hospital.

“Anyone strange comes through town,” Morningside said, “we have to be the first to know.” As if that wasn’t obvious.

“Yes, sir.”

“Wire this whole slagging wasteland up.
Organize
it.”

“Of course, sir.”

Lowry dispatched four men into Greenbank, two into Gooseneck, three into Fairsmith, three into World’s End.

The little town of Kloan warranted only two sentences in the official files, and a faded and ancient photograph of a street with sad little buildings and some ragged bunting stretched from the rooftops. Something about it made Lowry uneasy, and he dispatched a dozen men to Kloan and made sure they were well armed.

CHAPTER 9

KLOAN

Creedmoor rode hard and fast, north and west out of the Delta Baronies, through the high cold passes of the Opals, north of Jasper City, across the heartland prairies through thick green grass, leaping fences and waterways, day and night. His horse died beneath him. Another was ready for him, tied to a post at midnight in a little town south of Gibson that he never got a chance to learn the name of, because Marmion instantly said:

—Move on.

That horse died, too. Creedmoor thought he might die himself, that his old heart would give out, like a rat shaken in a terrier’s mouth. Every muscle, every joint, was constant agony. Marmion said:

—Faster.

Men of the Line might travel that distance in the belly of their Engines, on soft leather seats. No wonder they were so fat! But an Agent of the Gun couldn’t travel by Line, of course—he’d be sniffed out at once, by some damnable machine or snoop or other—and so it was the old ways for Creedmoor, the back roads, the hills, by day and by night. He caught a glimpse of himself in a dusty windowpane once, as he thundered down the Main Street of who-the-fuck-knew where, scattering women and children, and he was shocked by how
old
he looked, how red and lined in the face, how gray his hair was and how wild and ragged. It wounded his vanity. He always was a vain man.

—You’ll kill me, old friend. I swear you’ll kill me at this pace.

—Not yet. Faster.

He swung wide north around Kingstown Station, though it added two days to his journey, because he feared their spotlights and their search parties and their tollbooths and checkpoints, especially in his rapidly advancing condition of decay and exhaustion. Therefore he approached the Doll House from the east, just north of Kloan, and so he happened to see the posters nailed to trees every half mile alongside the road north of town, which were already fading and wilting like vivid blue-green flowers in the awful heat, but which still cheerfully promised the arrival in Kloan of
DR. SLOOP’S TRAVELING EMPORIUM OF PHYSIC AND PATENT-MEDICINES,
that very morning, once and once only, special-featuring
“PROFESSOR” HARRY RANSOM AND HIS INGENIOUS ELECTRICAL LIGHT-BRINGING APPARATUS
. . . .

—Medicine. Physic. Lights and amusements. A fair. Drink. Showgirls.

—No time, Creedmoor. Pass the town by.

—I shall die if I ride another hour without rest.

—No, Creedmoor. Too dangerous. We believe the enemy is present in this area. You may attract their notice.

—Fuck the enemy. I need medicine, by which I mean drink. Put the Goad to me if you like.

—One hour, Creedmoor.

—No more. On my honor.

—We will remember this.

There were few towns out there on the continent’s still-uncreated edge. None were more than twenty years old. Greenbank, which was a ways southwest of Kloan, was the biggest and the richest of them. Supposedly—if Creedmoor’s masters had not lied to him, which might or might not be the case—Dandy Fanshawe would be waiting there, worming in among the drifters of its bars and whorehouses. Abban the Lion and Drunkard Cuffee and Keane and Hang-’Em-High Washburne would scout the hills south of Greenbank. Together those five Agents—a mighty force—would be ready to meet Creedmoor once he emerged from the House and conduct him and the General away east.

There was Gooseneck to the west, which was poor, but it had a bank; and there was also World’s End to the northwest, which was ugly and sickly, but it had a mine.

And then there was Kloan, which had nothing special, except, apparently, Dr. Sloop and his medicines, and “Professor” Ransom and his apparatus.

Kloan was a few long straight dirt roads lashed together roughly crosswise, with a lodging house and general store and similar in the dust where they joined; a sprawl of small constructions knocked up out of tin and wood surrounded them. There was a market square with a kind of rickety stage, which was no doubt the most exciting thing for miles around. It was peaceful and dull and drowsily drunken.

Creedmoor rode in slowly, smiling and nodding. He left his horse at a hitching post and wandered into the market.

The whole rough mess of Kloan was dressed in sun-faded bunting, strung from the eaves of the big houses, nailed over the doors of lesser structures. All flounced up like a whore’s skirts. Dressed up soft and pretty for market-day—it implied a town where women had considerable say in the running of things, which struck Creedmoor as a promising situation. The idling crowd was composed largely of farmers, but also of pleasant-looking young women. He turned to the young lady next to him and beamed broadly at her and winked. She went pink and hid her pretty face in her fan.

—Most promising!

—No, Creedmoor. One hour.

Kloan bobbed like driftwood in a dull sea of flat brown fields. The fields were still but not empty. Hillfolk worked them, chained in gangs at the ankles, shuffling under the tuberous weight of black hair and beards. Probably their overseers were among the youths in the crowd or sprawled drunkenly on the dirt. The pretty young girl was arm in arm with a crop-headed barn-faced blacksmith-bicepped boy, who had the look of a young man handy with a whip.

—You know, the first man I ever killed was a slaver. Before I came to your service.

—We know.

—I had passionate views on the matter. Back when the blood was younger and hotter. Marching and speechifying for the Liberationists. That was after they kicked me out of the Knights of Labor, of course.

—Leave him be, Creedmoor.

Dr. Sloop was whooping and hollering up on the stage. He wore top hat and tails, even in Kloan’s awful heat; his face was red and his shirt was soaked and sweat ran from the ends of his long mustaches. One of his eyes was painted glass and it seemed to roll, glaring madly at the blue heat of the sky one moment and down at the dust the next.

—Oh, don’t worry, my friend. I long since stopped caring.

Sloop rolled his hat deftly down his arm and handed it to his bosomy showgirl; he rolled up his shirtsleeves and let his wild dye-black mane shake free. “Oh let’s get down to business, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s take a look at Sloop’s Tonic Water. It’ll cure what aches ya; who here has aches and pains? It’ll give ya vigor; who here’s a strong man? Ah, I know, I know, Kloan’s men are strong, I’m not blind! But who’d like to be
stronger
? It’ll keep ya young. You pretty girls of Kloan; who’d let such flowers fade?”