The Half-Made World (58 page)

“Sir—”

“Go ahead, Mr. Collier, whatever it is you’ve got in mind, you don’t need my permission.”

“Sir. There’s a fire.”

Lowry looked up and blinked. He took off his spectacles, rubbed them clean, and put them back on.

They were marching along the edge of a slope. Away in whatever direction Collier was pointing the ground fell sharply down, and over the tops of the gently shifting oaks, it was possible to make out, in the middle distance, a faint trail of black smoke.

“A camp, sir—a cook fire. It must be the Agent.”

“Yes. Yes.”

Lowry groped at his belt for his telescope before recalling that its mechanism had broken and he’d thrown it away days ago, maybe weeks ago. He fiddled with his spectacles again. It was a credit to his discipline that it took him only a minute to pull himself together, push his daydreams about death and duty to one side, and order Collier to divide what was left of the men into four groups of roughly equal size, and to surround the camp.

The smoke arose from a clearing in the oaks. Lowry’s forces surrounded the objective with suspicious ease—either, Lowry thought, the Agent’s senses were dulled out in the wilderness, or he was luring Lowry into a trap, or possibly he was just so slagging arrogant, he didn’t care if they
did
surround him.

Ordinarily Lowry would attack at a distance, with mortars and rockets and bombs, but of course, that was impossible without killing the General, too. The only alternative was to rush the enemy, bury him in waves of men. Lowry sent Collier in with the first wave, in the hope that he’d get killed, which would save Lowry the bother of stamping out Collier’s tendencies toward mutiny. As it happened, it wasn’t the Agent in the clearing at all, but Collier still got taken care of.

In the clearing were two men, standing to either side of a fire, over which they’d spitted one of the horrible misshapen deer of the forests. They’d heard the Linesmen’s approach too late to run, but in plenty of time to draw their weapons. They were armed with
bows,
like something out of ancient history, and they’d have been completely comical had they not fired off two deadly quick arrows, catching Collier in the throat and Mr. Shuttle in the shoulder. The Linesmen returned fire before they could reload.

One survived.

He’d been shot in the leg and had fallen unconscious. Lowry had him bandaged, tied up, and slapped awake.

Lowry said, “Explain yourself.”

The prisoner looked up in shock and confusion. He looked from Lowry’s face to the faces of Lowry’s men. He studied their uniforms. His eyes widened in horror.

“Linesmen.”

“Yes,” Lowry said.

The prisoner was a young man; tall, thin, wiry. He wore buckskin and fur. His dead companion had been an older fellow, forty or more, who wore the remains of a patched and tattered red jacket that filled Lowry with loathing and dread. Ancient and faded though it was, it was unmistakably the uniform of a soldier of the Red Valley Republic. It brought back all Lowry’s horrible buried childhood memories of the fighting at Black Cap; and fuck that.

“Explain yourself,” he repeated.

“I . . . Linesmen?” The young man screwed his face up into an expression of stubborn courage. “I will never tell you—”

Lowry hit him and he moaned.

“Please, sir, I don’t—”

“What are you? Deserters? Refugees?”

“We fled, we fled after the—”

“After the defeat. After we drove you from the world. You ran rather than be ground under the wheels. Right. Not just you, though, is it? Not just you and the old man. Don’t, don’t lie to me, it’s obvious—what else would you refuse to tell me? You’ll tell me in the end.”

“Please, we—”

“Not much fight in you. Not as much fight as I’d have expected—you were vicious bastards when I was a boy. I remember.”

He glanced over at the dead man again. That uniform! Lowry shivered as he recalled nights at Black Cap Valley crawling through stinking ditches laying barbed wire, under fire from the Republic’s rifles, knowing that at any moment the Republic’s arrogant cavalry might sweep past, and they thought of themselves as virtuous, but they were not too virtuous to ride down children of the Line. . . .

“Are you here to meet the Agent?”

“What?”

“The Agent,” Lowry said. “Creedmoor. Your General. Creedmoor’s working for you?”

“Who? What? I don’t—”

“Shut up. Creedmoor’s working for you; either he’s betrayed his masters or you’ve thrown in with them. And you have your General back. And you’ll have his weapon, soon enough. And now you want to start it all again, and it was hard enough to put you bastards down the first time. Right? Don’t lie. So where is he? Where have you taken him?”

CHAPTER 40

A MACHINE THAT WOULD GO OF ITSELF

Liv’s new acquaintances introduced themselves—thus becoming, their red-jacketed leader said, not captors, but friends. Red-jacket’s name was William Morton;
Captain
Morton to his men, but William—he allowed, with a yellow-toothed smile and a stiff elderly bow—to the good lady from out East.

The other two were called Blisset and Singleton, and they were brothers-in-law. Blisset’s sister was Singleton’s wife. Mary, her name was; Liv would meet her back at town, Captain Morton assured her. Blisset was the fair one, Singleton the dark one, unless it was the other way around, which was possible; Liv was so delighted to meet another human being that it hardly mattered what they said, and she had trouble paying attention. She had a strong urge to tell them about her research or to ask if they knew the latest Faculty gossip.

“What town, William?”

“. . . a fine woman, Mary is, a pillar of the community, a very virtuous—I beg your pardon, ma’am, we don’t see many strangers out here. In fact, we see none at all, ever. The town is New Design, ma’am. We have a library and high walls and productive mills and broad fields and a waterwheel on the river, all cut out of the oaks in accordance with the plans of wiser heads than mine. Two days’ brisk walk northwest of here, if you and your friend are ready to travel. Are you and he alone here?”

“Yes and no. You are from the Red Valley Republic?”

“Yes, and I suppose no. The Republic is no more. We fled out here twenty years ago, after all was lost at Black Cap, before the Line could destroy the last of us. We left the world behind; we took what seemed most precious in the Republic with us. Mr. Blisset and Mr. Singleton were only boys then, and I was a younger man and didn’t mind the walk, which I’m sure you know as well as anyone is quite formidable.”

“Extraordinary. I know you only from history books. This is rather like meeting something from a children’s story, Captain Morton. An elf, perhaps, or a troll.”

“William, ma’am.”

“My friend here is . . . Take a look at my friend’s face, William.”

Morton smiled politely and crouched down by the General’s side. “He is very old,” Morton said. “But I’m no young buck myself. Is he unwell?”

“Yes. Do you know who he is? Imagine his beard trimmed, imagine him twenty years younger, imagine him—”

Morton leapt to his feet. Singleton and Blisset stepped to his side, drawing their weapons, and he waved at them and said, “No. No. Down. It—” Tears ran down his cheeks. He half-started to salute, then turned to Liv and said, “Is it? Is it him?”

“So I’ve been told. I was beginning to have doubts.”

“What happened to him?”

“The Line’s noisemakers. Years ago now, I suppose. I am his Doctor.”

“You brought him back to us. . . .”

“Until five minutes ago, I had no idea you existed. I did not come here of my own free will, and nor did he. We were kidnapped by an Agent of the Gun, and fled out here with an army of the Line in pursuit.”

Morton kept clenching and unclenching his fists. Singleton and Blisset approached slowly and knelt by the General as if at an altar. The General’s eyes wandered all around the clearing, showing no interest in anyone in it.

“The enemy,” Morton said. “Even out here. After twenty years.”

“What are your numbers in New Design, Captain?”

“Enough, ma’am. Enough. Singleton, Blisset!”

The two young men wordlessly lifted the General between them, each taking one arm. The General’s head lolled on Blisset’s shoulder and he drooled. Blisset’s expression was blank.

“You are both under our protection, ma’am.”

“They will come for him. Creedmoor first. Then the Line; I believe we’ve lost them for now, but they
will
find us. Are you sure, Captain Morton?”

“Quite sure, ma’am.”

“Then lead the way.”

The General whined in the back of his throat, long and high, like a mosquito, a note that rose slowly and died slowly, while Morton’s smile stiffened and creaked like old canvas, and for want of anything better to do, Morton turned to the General and saluted.

Blisset and Singleton carried the General away under the oaks, and Liv and Morton went behind them.

New Design—the name was a
classical
allusion, Morton explained, a phrase of one of the ancient philosophers. Liv congratulated him:
A soldier and a scholar! Rare these days.
To carve a new community in the wilderness, one must be both, Morton said; though he would allow that he did not know precisely
which
philosopher the allusion came from. Liv told him. She told him a great deal; they talked about the news, about philosophy, about New Design, about the lands to the east, about the weather. She tried not to say too much, to keep her secrets, to stay in control, but she couldn’t; she was simply too exhilarated to be talking to another more-or-less ordinary human being again. Unguarded, she said almost everything that came into her head; Morton listened guilelessly and nodded, and told her the news from New Design, quite eagerly, proud of his remote little town.