The Rise of Ransom City (28 page)

Pretty much nobody ever goes among Folk settlements except soldiers, slave-takers, and missionaries. Soldiers and slave-takers keep their opinions to themselves and missionaries are untrustworthy witnesses, and so few people are familiar with what it is like to walk in one of the places that remain in the possession of the Folk.

It is very hard to describe. Among the rocks there were huts made of stone and wood. They were very plain and simple in their shape but everything was carved, all over, in patterns of surpassing strangeness, that were beautiful from one angle and hideous from another. I closed one eye to look closer as my sight seemed to swim and discovered that when seen through different eyes the carvings took different forms— they changed like they were being spoken. It was like the whole place was one big carving, or the letters in one big word, and I wondered if that was what the whole western world was like before our forefathers all those years ago set foot across the mountains and began cutting down trees and building towns and making maps and damming rivers and naming things &c. There was no other kind of art that I could see, though who’s to say I would have known it if I could see it— a cat might wander into East Conlan and stroll down Main Street never understanding the tenth part of anything he sees.

There were no luxuries, and as a matter of fact there were hardly any tools. I guess they had no time for those things. The carving absorbed their attention. They were desperate— they were right up against the wall. They had a whole lot to remember and write down before it vanished from the world. I know how that feels.

Joe kept whispering his disgust for the whole thing and I wished to all the powers that might exist in anybody’s world that he would shut up. I did not dare say anything out loud. I did not even want to think too loud in my own head. I’d long since lost sight of my father and the woman and I was exploring for the sake of exploration. I guess I was trespassing but at the time I did not think about it that way.

I began to discern patterns in the carvings. I got down on my knees and I stretched on tip-toes to follow one particular design that ran like a thread through the whole pattern— an endless ever-renewing spiral— it is difficult to describe in words and I certainly do not intend to draw it and commit it to the mails! When the devotees of the World Serpent depict that wondrous creature eating its own tail, I think perhaps they are trying to reckon with the same great truth this pattern spoke of. I recalled a dream I had once had of one of the staircases in Grady’s mansion climbing forever and ever in a circle, always returning to itself, and how in my dream there seemed no reason why the world should not be that way. It had that inner light I spoke of— as a matter of fact I believe it
was
light, or at least the word for it. A circle, like the sun, or like what goes on inside the sun. A map of a never-ending world. I struggled to commit it to memory. I fumbled in my pockets for paper and something to write with— something to prick my finger with so that I could write— anyhow that is why I did not see that we were surrounded until it was too late.

Six of the Folk surrounded us— three in front of us and three behind. On either side of us there were tall rocks— we were in a kind of narrow defile. The Folk were not armed but they were none the less menacing for that.

I stood up straight.

“Let me explain,” I said. “I am Harry Ransom, of East Conlan— you know my father. You have business with him— I know that— well, that’s no concern of mine— but I am here with a business proposition of my own, and I apologize for not entering into this place with the proper formalities but I don’t know what they are, and what I have to say is of the greatest possible value to you and me both, not to mention the whole wide world— you see I’m a scientist— I may look young but don’t discount me— and my particular study is light. Do you know what I mean when I say scientist? I guess you do. All this stuff here— all this writing, nobody made all this by accident, did they? Well there’s a whole lot I could offer you and a whole lot you can offer me, I mean for instance the meaning of this sign right here. . . .”

They looked to each other and began to make a noise that I did not recognize as laughter. As a matter of fact I did not realize it was laughter at all until I heard it again years later in the swamp, after the
Damaris
went down.

I guess maybe Joe was in some ways quicker on the up-take than me, because he took offense. He drew a knife from his belt and drew himself up to his full height and said that he did not see why any civilized and hard-working man should be insulted by woods-dwelling savages, whose proper place was as slaves, and that they might kill him if they chose but he would not be mocked by them. He started this speech in a man’s deep voice but it broke halfway through to reveal the boy below. Then he swung clumsily at the nearest man of the Folk, who stepped aside as smoothly as if he was a ghost. I tried to hold Joe back but the next thing I saw was one of the Folk lifting a stone and buzzing it right at my head with accuracy equal to my sister’s and with a smooth motion that would make the best ball-player in the Three Cities weep with envy. I spun and fell facedown. Everything went black. I think it is thanks to that incident that I have bad sight in one eye, as I think I already said.

I woke to voices. They spoke in the plain old accent of East Conlan, same as mine. I felt relief and despair both at the same time. My sister was there and my father was there too.

They had found me lying in a ditch not fifty feet south of town. All I can guess is that the Folk returned me there.

Joe never did return.

I said nothing about my encounter to anyone in East Conlan. I told Jess that all we’d learned about my father was that he had gone into the woods to drink in solitude, after which discovery Joe and me had a falling out and he got separated and I guess he got lost. My father asked what I was doing in the woods and I said that I was conducting experiments. I said that I had climbed a tree to see where I was going and had fallen out of it and that was how I had injured my head.
Too much cleverness, not enough sense,
my father said, and who could argue with him? The stitches for the injury to my head and the bandages for my eye cost us both a lot more money and I was not able to return to my true calling, by which I mean the study of Light, for several months. When I did I threw out everything that had gone before. I had a new design to work from. Do not imagine it was easy.

I never did ask my father what he was doing in those woods. I guess he went to beg or haggle for what ever power the Folk might have to offer him. Something to settle scores or turn back the clock or make the world right for him again. He must have been very desperate to think they could or would help him but he would not be the first or the last to end up that way. I guess he never got what he was looking for because about a month after that night the Line sent soldiers into the woods. They said it was for our own protection after what happened to Joe but I do not believe that for a moment. They burned down most of the woods and drove the Folk west. We saw the smoke and the flashes and the bangs one morning and that was the end of that. Not long after that my father died— it was his heart that finally did for him.

Well anyhow as I stood there years later up to my knees in swamp-water and trembling with fear I remembered all this. The spiral sign that I carved on the tree to show to those Folk was one of the same signs that I had spied in the woods all those years ago. It was just one of many aspects or phases of the pattern that I had seen in the woods that night and every single one of them is carved into my memory. The Apparatus is constructed around a number of such signs. That is why it can do things that the Professors in Jasper City will tell you cannot be done. Part of it is made of the science of a different world. And part of it is mine. Nobody has ever done that before.

Some of the Professors in Jasper City will tell you that the world is made of Ether, and some will tell you that it is made of Atoms. It is my opinion that it is made of words and signs.

Anyhow I tried to explain to those Folk about the Apparatus, talking mostly in gestures.

I was taking a gamble. For years I’d wondered why those fellows back in the woods west of Conlan had spared me and returned me to town. It doubted it was because of my charm and handsome smile, and I doubted that they were merciful, because they were surely not merciful with poor stupid Joe. Maybe they’d found my father too slow a study for their purposes— too old and set in his ways— maybe they’d looked to me instead. Had they wanted me to set eyes on that sign? Was it all an accident, had I stolen it, or was it a gift?

If I had not been meant to see the sign, maybe they would consider me a thief— but then maybe they were planning to kill me anyhow. If I had been meant to take it— and if these fellows were of the same leanings as those back in East Conlan, and who knows what sort of politics the Folk have, it was worth a roll of the dice in my opinion—
if
they had meant me to take it then maybe they would let me go, or even help me find my way out of the swamp. If there was a plan I was happy to go along with it. Anything to get out of that swamp.

I tried to explain all about the Apparatus. About how one day when I had got it working and when I had money to mass-produce it— I tried to explain about
money
— I did not know if they had anything like it, maybe they did— anyhow I said that one day there would be free Light and energy in every town everywhere in the world, and peace and prosperity and an end to meanness and cruelty and jealousy. I mentioned incidentally that it turned out to be one first-class weapon but that was not what I had meant for it. Maybe they had other plans. I did not know. I had sometimes imagined that the Folk of East Conlan had meant me to see that sign so that I could bring peace and prosperity to the world, but their brothers and sisters of the
Damaris
didn’t look like they cared too much for the world.

The laughter continued throughout my speech, and for a very long time after I was silent.

I can be a patient man but in the end I got irritated.

“Well,” I said. “What is it? What’s the answer? This is no joke— I stand before you as a—”

One of them raised a hand. I had visions of stone-throwing and losing my other eye and I ducked. When I stood straight again the Folk had turned and stopped laughing and were walking away.