The Rise of Ransom City (32 page)

I stood across the street and I watched the workers coming back from their mid-day meals. In many parts of Jasper there was lunchtime drunkenness, but Mr. Baxter’s workers were notably sober. Perhaps it was because of the policemen.

I cannot easily describe what I felt standing there, before that place I had so long dreamed of.

I heard the hateful words of Mr. Baxter’s letter over and over in my mind, until it seemed that every man in the busy street could hear them too, until it seemed like they boomed from loudspeakers behind the windows of Mr. Baxter’s tower. I could not understand why he had slandered me so. I could not understand why he had betrayed me.

The obvious explanation, I told myself, was that Baxter wanted to crush a competitor. That was not just my pride talking. I knew from his letter that he owned the Northern Lighting Corporation. If my Apparatus were perfected and popularized it would render the NLC obsolete. That was reason enough for slander. But I could not accept that Mr. Baxter had acted from so petty a motive. The hero of the
Autobiography
was a sharp businessman, but he was not a cheat.

I considered another possibility. He was an old man, and a rich one, with much to lose. Perhaps he feared the rumors of Liv and Creedmoor’s world-upending weapon— the world as it was had been good to him. But I could not accept that either. The hero of the
Autobiography
was not afraid of progress.

I recall that I watched two pigeons squabbling in the street, and I thought that perhaps Mr. Baxter’s letter was a kind of joke, a rich man’s whim, a game he had decided to play with me for some eccentric reason. If so, much might depend on how I responded. Perhaps I should show that I was a good sport. But no— I did not believe that, either. You heard of other rich men playing that sort of game, but not Mr. Baxter. He did not play games at all.

There was a darker possibility, one that I did not want to consider at all. I knew that Mr. Baxter owned the NLC, and I had heard that the NLC operated on the Western Rim in concert with the forces of the Line. It was possible— I could not deny that it was possible— that even Mr. Baxter had surrendered his pride and independence, and was acting in this matter as a servant of the Line. If so, he had slandered me only in passing, the better to deny the existence of Liv and Creedmoor’s weapon, and he had done it only at the orders of the Line. Perhaps he had not even read the letter before he signed it. Perhaps I was nothing to him, not a competitor, not a game— just a name on a letter written for him by some faceless Line attaché.

I paced back and forth. Some part of me thought that if I could only speak to Mr. Baxter face to face, man to man, we could resolve our misunderstanding. If only I could somehow speak to him without the company of policemen and bodyguards. If I could ask him:
Why?

I paced and paced. Crowds and pigeons came and went. Shadows lengthened and an evening chill crept into the air but I did not see Mr. Baxter himself emerge. It occurred to me that he might not look like he did in his pictures, and perhaps he had left without my noticing. Or perhaps he never left, preferring to work all night— there were electric-lights coming on in some of the upper windows of his fortress.

I say it was a fortress not only because of the high fence and the policemen, but because I recalled Mr. Baxter’s
Autobiography,
in which he wrote:

The future belongs to the tall buildings and the great cities! For the man of destiny there is no substitute for the hard work and the big ideas of Jasper or Gibson or the other pioneer metropolises that are a-grow today in this great land of ours. The man of business— if I may be excused a digression into the romantic— the man of business is the lord of this realm, is the questing knight, and the office-tower is his castle, his fortress on the borderlands.

The way these things are traditionally resolved on the Western Rim is by the duel. Matters of property and ownership, matters of pride of authorship, matters of insult, matters of honor— all come to the same resolution— ten paces and turn, gentlemen! But there were a number of things wrong with that plan. First, this was not the Rim, this was Jasper City, and the duel was illegal— second, I had no gun— third, there were too many policemen about— and fourth, Mr. Baxter could not be less than ninety years old, and even in the wildest and least civilized parts of the Rim it is not honorable to shoot a nonagenarian dead, regardless of what he has said about you.

The way these things were traditionally resolved in Jasper was by the lawsuit, which is all right for some people, but I had no money and my adversary was the richest man in the city. Besides I could hardly sign my name to papers in open court— I was a fugitive.

The sun fell toward the eastern horizon. One by one each window all the way down the side of the Tower flashed golden fire then went dark. Shortly after that the sky blushed with violet, and there was black not far behind. Mr. Baxter still did not emerge.

Hidden motors coughed and thrummed, drawing the Tower’s gates slowly shut. Two policemen walked beside the gates as they curved inward like men leading cattle home to pasture of an evening. Both of them wore long coats and one of them held a bright cigarette in his hand.

Just as I was about to turn away there was the noise of a motor-car. Moments later a long black automobile emerged from between the closing gates.

I was suddenly sure that it contained Mr. Baxter himself. Who else? I ran toward it and on the way inspiration struck and when I stood beside the automobile and knocked on its black window I shouted, “Mr. Baxter? Sir? I am a writer for the
Jasper City Evening Post
— sir, would you care to talk about what you wrote about the White Rock Miracle, sir, excuse me—”

I stumbled a little as the automobile turned and accelerated. In the blackness of the window I saw mostly my own face but also someone else looking out at me. It was a thin face with sharp eyes and a long nose that swam menacingly toward me out of the black.

I knocked on the glass again. The nose did not move.

One of the policemen from the gate tackled me to the ground. I hit the cobbles with my head and cried out in shock.

The automobile moved on a little way, then stopped, like it was thinking.

After a few moments the automobile started moving again. I was unaccountably relieved, even though the policeman was none too gentle in the way he pulled me to my feet and sent me staggering off with a blow to the stomach and a kick in the ass. He did not trouble himself even to insult me as I limped away, he just lit his cigarette and slipped in between the gates as they closed.

Halfway down the block from the Baxter Tower there was a small hotel. A man stood on its steps, leaning against a wrought-iron rail and smoking. He wore a rumpled suit of red and green linen, and a sloppy bow-tie. He had an impressive black mustache, that was shaped somewhat like the cow-annihilating cowling of an Engine, or the design on an old-world knight’s shield that is called a
cheveron
. He had a nose that was probably eagle-like before it got broken, and he had very blue and very clever eyes, with which he had quite clearly been watching me watch the gate of the Baxter Tower for some time.

He was utterly unembarrassed to be caught spying. As a matter of fact he smiled and waved me over, like we were friends.

“Your head’s bleeding,” he said.

I touched it. “So it is.”

“So,” he said, “new in town?”

I saw no reason to deny it. “It shows, huh?”

“It does. No harm in that. Everyone was new in town once. I myself was born down in the Deltas, more years ago than I care to remember.”

“Hamlin,” I said, naming the first Rim-town that popped into my head.

“Not familiar with it.”

“Rim-wards.”

“Uh-huh. Fleeing the fighting out there?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Too bad. Cigarette?”

“No thank you. You know, I was told that people in Jasper were unfriendly to strangers.”

“Well,” he said, and smiled. “My motives are ulterior.”

I could at that point have run away. But it is not in my nature to spurn friendly conversation.

“I heard that about you big-city types.”

“So,” he said. “You’ve got a keen and patient interest in Mr. Baxter’s Tower. I have been watching you from the window of my room since lunchtime. I have watched mystics meditating on the empty throne of the Silver City or counting the innumerable coils of the World Serpent and few of them have the staying-power you exhibit. What could possibly account for it? Are you just seeing the sights? Or looking for work?”

“I have work, I think. On Swing Street.”

He raised one eyebrow. I don’t know if I mentioned his eyebrows before but they were as impressive in their own way as the mustache. Throughout our conversation they bristled and flattened as he spoke so that they could express good humor at one moment, curiosity the next, fulminating wrath when necessary. Sometimes I felt I was conversing with the eyebrows and he was merely taking notes.

“It’s not what I expected,” I said, “but it’s better than nothing.”

“They let you spend all day staring at Mr. Baxter’s Tower?”

“Theater-folk keep irregular hours.”

“They do,” he said. “That’s very true.”

He lit another cigarette.

“So,” he said. “Maybe your fascination with the Baxter Trust stems from anger. The Smilers will tell you anger is bad for the soul but I disagree— sometimes a good spell of anger is just what this damn awful world calls for and there’s no alternative. Maybe the Trust foreclosed on your farm or maybe they dammed your river up-stream—or maybe it’s political, maybe you’ve come all the way here from out West for reasons of politics?”

He leaned back against the rail, stretching out an arm to toy with one of its little wrought-iron spearheads.

“I don’t even know what you mean by politics, sir. I make it a rule to stay out of that stuff. It does nobody any good. Maybe I’m just seeing the sights, like you said.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. What
kind
of revenge, though? You’re not carrying a bomb. You don’t have a gun— do you? No, I didn’t think so and that look on your face confirms it. I mean no offense— a lot of crazy people come to town these days. But you don’t look crazy, not in the ordinary way. I’ve been watching you for a while and I can’t figure you out. Something tells me it’s worth the effort, and my instincts are rarely wrong.”

“Let’s get one thing clear, friend— I said I don’t want revenge, and I meant it. So if that’s all you wanted to know—”

He held up a hand.

“Maybe there’s some confusion here— I get used to being recognized. Fame, son, it gets into your head, never pursue it. I’m not a policeman, if that’s what you’re thinking, and I don’t work for Mr. Baxter, fortune forfend that the day should I ever come I should be reduced to that. My name’s Elmer Merrial Carson.”

“Hal Rawlins,” I said, cautiously taking his hand.

“I won’t take offense that you don’t know my name. I guess you
are
new in town.”

Of course I have learned since then that Mr. Carson was somewhat famous in Jasper City and throughout the Tri-City Territory, as the writer, reporter and sometime publisher of the
Jasper City Evening Post.
He was known in particular for his broadsides in support of Liberationism and the five-day week and the re-apportionment of the Senate, and against the cruel conditions in the Yards for labor and livestock, and against the meddling of the Line in Jasper City affairs. He was also known for his pen-portraits of Jasper City’s ceaseless influx of eccentrics and immigrants, portraits that were sometimes comical, sometimes pitiable, sometimes inspiring, sometimes alarming, sometimes all of these things at once. When I met him he had mounted seventy-seven such heads on his wall, so to speak, and I was to be— he said— his seventy-eighth.

“Are you hungry? You look hungry— don’t deny it.”

“I travel a lot,” I said. “On business. You get used to irregular meals.”

“The same is true of the journalism racket, Mr. Rawlins. Well, it’s decided then. I’m going to buy the both of us dinner, and you’re going to tell me what brings you to Jasper, and what brings you to stand outside Mr. Baxter’s Tower all damn day, and how come I heard you tell those policemen that you are a writer for
the Jasper City Evening Post,
which I know you are not, on account of I am Big Chief editor and part-owner of the
Post
and I don’t know your face, son.”

He pushed himself off from the rail, pointed down the street with his cigarette like an officer directing his men once more unto the breach, then set off walking.

Of course I had no intention of telling him what brought me to Mr. Baxter’s Tower. But I was very curious as to why
he
had been watching Baxter’s Tower all day, until he had been distracted by watching me.* And besides I had heard about the extraordinary example of Jasper City’s financial magic that was the
expense-account,
and I was eager to experience it for myself.