The Half-Made World (43 page)

He looked up and winked. His sentimental mood seemed to leave him as fast as it had come.

“On the other hand, fuck ’em all; they’re dead and I’m alive.” He laughed. “Absent friends!”

Liv gasped and put her hand to her mouth; she realized that she’d quite forgotten Maggfrid, who’d be terribly frightened without her. . . .

After they ate, Creedmoor sat himself back in the shade and removed a small paperback novel from his pack. He opened the pages carefully; the rain had forced its way into the pack, and the book was lumpy and swollen. The
Child’s History
had fared no better.

“Someone must keep the flies from the meat while it dries, Liv. Would you mind at all taking the first shift? . . .”

Liv spent the remainder of the afternoon standing on the edge of the steep slope, swatting at flies with a pine branch. Her feet were blistered, and she shifted her weight uncomfortably. Her nerves flared and jangled and ached dully, and she could think of little else but her nerve tonic. There was no hope of obtaining more of it while they remained on their westward course. There were substitutes for it that could be extracted from certain herbs, but she had only the haziest idea how. In any case, she recognized none of the strange plants that grew out on the edge of the world. They seemed made according to no settled or sane rules of botany.

For instance—among the trees from which she’d cut firewood for their meal, there had been a growth of bristly greenish black weeds; and she’d been deeply disconcerted, on bending down for closer inspection, to see the leaves and petals surrounded by twitching black segmented
legs
like those of flies, or bees; as if the distinction between animal and vegetable was not yet clearly or regularly observed out here. She had very much disliked the way the green flowers turned slowly toward her.

Liv told herself to be strong: to maintain, by force of will if necessary, her reason. She swatted the branch back and forth, back and forth, and watched the dull meanderings of the flies. After a while, she forgot herself in the work.

Creedmoor fell asleep over his novel. Twice, he lurched up and fired a shot that claimed an animal in the scrub nearby. The first was a white rabbit; the second was rabbit-eared but otherwise mostly doglike. He cleaned and stripped them, too.

Shortly before he fell asleep for the last time, he looked up and waved to catch Liv’s attention.

“Yes, Mr. Creedmoor?”

“I forgot to tell you. That old madman who pissed on you this afternoon is none other than the General Orlan Enver, architect and hero of the Red Valley Republic, greatest of the great men of Western history.”

He grinned broadly and his eyes twinkled. He seemed to have hugely enjoyed revealing that secret.

Then he leaned back and fell asleep for good and was soon snoring like an Engine.

The General was asleep, too. Liv regarded him with astonishment.

The stars came out. They were different. A spiderweb of light hung over the western edge of the world. One bright star shot and burned out, then another; then a third; then the web dissolved into darkness.

In the morning, they went down into the valley.

CHAPTER 29

THE VALLEY

—Creedmoor.

—Yes?

—You talk too much to the woman. You should not have told her who the General is. We ordered you not to.

—Too late now. And how else can she do her job?

—And you let her poke around in the General’s mind. If she succeeds, you know you must kill her.

—I understand your position.

—In the end, you must kill her.

—Suppose I refuse? I’m not saying I will or I won’t. But if I did. What then?

—You are increasingly rude and arrogant. We should renew your respect for your masters.

—But you need me whole and healthy and fleet of foot.

—For now. Creedmoor, we must leave you for the time being. There are deliberations under way in our Lodge. We are making alternative plans. In the event of your failure. It is . . . difficult. Painful. Frightening. It demands our attention. We can leave you with strength; you will not have our wisdom.

—Somehow I’ll manage without your wisdom, then.

—You have your orders. Flee west. Do not think we are not watching you.

Creedmoor suddenly lifted his head and smiled at Liv.

“Courage, Liv. All will be well. We must go on alone as best we can.”

They walked down the dry riverbed. It was their second day in the valley. The narrow corridor stretched through the hills and farther into the distance than Liv could see. She’d learned to tell by the sun that they were heading roughly westward.

“Above all, I regret the loss of our horses,” Creedmoor said. “Noble beasts, the both of them. But the
important
thing is that there are no roads out here, and we’ll avoid the plains, and so our pursuers’ vehicles will be useless to them. They can’t ride horses, Liv, the Linesmen can’t—they are afraid of their muscles and eyes and teeth and wildness. And their little fat legs and blackened lungs will not carry them fast. We have a solid lead. I am quite optimistic.”

The sun itself still blazed red-hot; however, it had set very early the day before, as if it was midwinter. Creedmoor had shrugged and told her not to worry about it: things would be strange as they went west.

There’d been dreadful winds down the valley all night, lifting the stones of the riverbed and sending them hurtling down. They’d sheltered in a river-carved grotto and listened to the echoes of the tumbling stones. In the morning, they walked on over the cracked red mud of the riverbed.

Around midday, when the sun flooded the riverbed with terrible heat, they sheltered again under an overhang of rock. It had been hollowed out centuries ago by the river’s passage. There was a trickle of water beneath it, which Creedmoor pronounced safe. He filled his water-skin and doled out the strips of dried meat and they ate.

It was hard work forcing the stuff down the General’s throat, as he moaned and shifted and refused to swallow. He fouled himself, and Liv had to clean him as best she could. She felt very keenly the absence of nurses.

“It would be unchivalrous of me to leave the old man’s care entirely to you,” Creedmoor said. “Remind me to take my turn one of these days.”

He settled in to read his novel with evident pleasure. He started to whistle.

Liv sat beside the General.

“General Enver,” she said. He didn’t look at her.

She felt ridiculous now, reading him fairy tales or talking to him like a fool, or prodding and poking him with drugs and electrical therapy.

“We are in the presence of history,” Creedmoor interjected. She ignored him.

“General, I read your book,” she said. She was aware that the General was a great figure in the West’s troubled history; that meant very little to her. To her, the broken creature beside her was first and foremost the author of the
Child’s History
.

He was humorless, proud, a little self-righteous, in many ways narrow. His lectures on
decency
and
fair play
and
democracy
and
moral cleanliness
were often unintentionally amusing. His system of virtues (seven personal, six civic, five martial, illustrated diagrammatically in an appendix) was closer to madness than to philosophy. And yet . . . the
Child’s History
emphasized more than once that General Enver was
merely an ordinary dutiful hardworking citizen like yourself,
but it was clear that he was not, and knew he was not; he was a visionary.

He had been there in the Republic’s first days, in Morgan Town, when it was a conspiracy of scholars and idealistic aristocrats, meeting in the upper rooms of taverns. He alone had dared to make their philosophies real. He had liberated Morgan Town, Asher, Lud-Town. He had turned the Red Valley Accord, which had been a kind of loose mercantile association of baronies and trading companies and city-states, into a military alliance, then a movement, then a faith, then a spearhead of conquering forces that had swept south, and west, and then east, toppling petty states and towns and self-styled dukedoms and kingdoms and forcing their rulers, at gunpoint if necessary, to sit at the great stone meeting hall in the Red Valley and, grumbling, to cast their votes in the jury-rigged but rather remarkable democracy of nations they called a Republic. He had purged the Agents of the Gun from his lands; he had held back the Line. Liv knew little of politics and nothing of tactics, but it was apparent even so that he was a genius.

He had been present at the banks of the Red River for the signing of the Charter, but he had not signed; he’d said he was just a simple soldier. He left that to the Presidents and the Senators and their kind.

Liv removed the
Child’s History
from the pocket of her baggy red flannel shirt. It had been swollen by the rains and now by her own sweat into a shape that was curved and gilled like fungus, and decades of its story were now unreadable, but it had survived. It was a well-made old thing.

“Do you remember this, General?”

He said nothing.

“Very well, then.” She opened it and began at the beginning.