The Rise of Ransom City (33 page)

A Portrait of Mr. Carson

I’ve remarked already on the great journalist’s eyebrows. I will not attempt to describe him any further. How could I compete with the man himself? He publishes an autobiography every other year, and I bet he has published another since I last looked. You may purchase and read
Early Attempts
or
Midstream
or
The Wildcats
if you want to know more. If I’d read his books when I was a boy instead of Old Man Baxter’s who knows how things might have turned out.**

*I had my suspicions, like everyone else. I thought I was on to a story about Mr. Baxter; I was half-right. The details hardly matter now. I have written about the Fall of Jasper elsewhere. I will let Mr. Ransom tell it here in his own way. —EMC

**Maybe worse. I make no promises that my books are Improving Literature for little boys; they are true, for the most part, but that is not the same thing. —EMC

I guess one day Mr. Carson may read this whole
Autobiography,
in which case I hope he will take my remarks regarding his eyebrows in the friendly spirit with which I meant them. History already judges me too harshly and I do not need any more enemies, especially not ones who can write.*

*Worse things have been said. —EMC

When I returned to the Ormolu Amaryllis was in something of a panic, having convinced herself that I had decamped for a rival theater, like the Hamilton or the Horizon or &c. I assured her of my loyalty. She fussed over my head-wound and I told her I had fallen over. I told her I had met the famous Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson of the
Evening Post
and sung her praises to him and he had promised to write her up in his column, and though she did not believe me she seemed flattered that I had taken the trouble to lie to her.

In the morning I set to work in earnest. For a few days I was busy cleaning and polishing and running errands and learning all the tricks and implements of the magic business. Stage-magic is a science as complex as the study of electricity or light or anything else. Sometimes I thought it would be easier to learn the genuine article. Most of the Great Rotollo’s most treasured implements had been lost when the
Damaris
went down, and the truth is Amaryllis was at that date entertaining crowds mostly through sheer grit, and the novelty of her sex.

I set to work reconstructing those lost devices, scavenging parts from scrapyards and the sweepings of blacksmiths all over Hoo Lai. I learned through experimentation about clockwork and the confinement of pigeons and— but I could waste words on this forever, and it would do nobody any good. I gutted one of the Ormolu’s broken-down old pianos, one which I thought Mr. Quantrill would not notice the absence of, and harvested wire. Slowly and cautiously I began to acquire the parts for the reconstruction of the Apparatus— I was developing a great many ideas about stage-lighting and illusion, and if I did not yet have the parts I could talk about them so well that Amaryllis almost believed they were real and even Mr. Quantrill was curious.

I pushed my plans to settle accounts with Baxter to the back of my mind— I was too busy to think of loitering outside his offices or pestering him with lawsuits or attempting an assassination. The newspapers reported that two men who’d claimed for the benefit of autograph-hunters to be Harry Ransom and John Creedmoor had opened fire with handguns on the Dryden Engine near the borders of the Territory, and been annihilated— I hardly noticed.

Two weeks after I arrived in Jasper I was the subject of one of Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson’s famous newspaper pen-portraits—you may read it for yourself, if any copies survived the Battle of Jasper. He portrayed a series of amiably eccentric inventors, including the usual cast of rain-makers and virility-enhancers and lead-to-gold types and lastly a Mr. Rawlins of the Ormolu Theater, self-proclaimed survivor of the
Damaris,
and his wonderful— though, Mr. Carson implied, most likely imaginary— automated self-playing piano.

Despite my best efforts, and despite my promises to her, the Amazing Amaryllis was not mentioned by name. That caused her to sink into a mild depression. She had never believed me when I said that I had met Mr. Carson but as soon as she saw the column she became convinced that her hopes and dreams had depended on it ever since arriving in Jasper City. That night her performance was off— in fact she fouled the Gibson City Gaffle so badly there was jeering from the audience.

She was still in a state of mild depression some days later, when a member of the audience forced her way backstage through the curtain after her performance.

I thought this uninvited intruder meant to complain— it had been another bad show— and I attempted to intercept her.

I said, “Now, miss, if you have anything to say, it’s—”

She said, “Are you Hal Rawlins?”

I acknowledged that I was.

“Ah-hah! So there you are.”

She was young, and short. She had black curling hair and brown eyes. She spoke in the slow and musical accent of the Deltas. She looked ragged and hungry and sleepless. I cannot say that I noticed immediately that she was pretty, maybe on account of the way she was glaring at me.

“How dare you— how dare you, sir, how— I am Adela Iermo, Adela
Kotan
Iermo. You know that name, sir, yes I can see that you do!”

I knew part of it.
Kotan
was the word etched into the uppermost winding-mechanism of the self-playing piano. Was this its first owner? Could this be its creator? If so, how many hours had I spent admiring the genius of this young woman!

“Did you think you would never face me?”

“I confess I never did— why, ma’am, I
dreamed
of—”

“The
Damaris
— the self-playing piano— that is
my
work, sir. Did you think I would not find out— did you think you could boast and lie and claim it as your own and I would let the matter be— I am looking you in the face, sir, do you still claim it as your own?”

Amaryllis and a pair of stagehands watched us.

“Listen,” I said. “We should be friends, Miss Kotan, you see I—”

I extended a hand toward her, in what I reckoned was a friendly way. She slapped it aside. I soon learned that this was a gesture recognized in the Code of Dueling of the nobility of the Deltas, but at first I took it as mere rudeness, and was nonplussed.

“A
duel,
” Amaryllis said. She swayed like she was about to swoon, but since nobody moved to catch her, she decided not to.

“A duel,” Mr. Quantrill said. One of the stagehands had summoned him, or perhaps he had been alerted by Adela’s shouting. In any case he stood stock-still with his arms folded, attempting to intimidate.

“Not in my theater,” Mr. Quantrill said. “This isn’t the Rim or the— what are you, Miss Kotan or Iermo what ever it is, you sound like you’re from down in the Deltas, I know things are done differently there but this is Jasper City, you know? The duel has been banned for thirty years or more.”

“It’s a question of honor,” Adela said.

“It’s a question of aiding and abetting plain murder,” Mr. Quantrill said.

She seemed to give this serious consideration. They say in story-books that
her brow furrowed
. Well, that is what happened.

“My quarrel is with Mr. Rawlins here. I don’t—”

“Listen,” I said. “You and me should talk, Miss Kotan— Adela—I mean—”

“Enough
lies,
” she said.

Mr. Quantrill had been signaling with his eyebrows to the stagehands for some time, and they had been pretending not to understand for as long as they plausibly could, but now they sighed and stood and stepped toward Adela, meaning to subdue her. She drew a gun from beneath her coat and they sat down again at once.

Her coat was so battered and road-worn I could not to this day say what it was made of. It was a dusty rose-red. It had no buttons and loose threads. She wore a white shirt and stiff trousers and no jewelry. Despite the poverty and disarray of her clothing— I shall not mention the condition of her hair— there was something unmistakably aristocratic about her. Above all her accent, which was that of the landowning classes of the Delta territories, as Mr. Quantrill had observed— but also the way she stood, and the way she held her pistol, firmly but carelessly, like it was meant for art or sport and not for killing. I guessed that she was newly arrived in town.

Amaryllis said, “Hal, what’s going on— who is this?”

“A good question,” Mr. Quantrill said. “Mr. Rawlins?”

Before I could say anything Adela interrupted. “Mr. Rawlins is a thief— the worst kind of thief, the thief of another’s hard work and genius and good name. The self-playing piano is mine. You cannot imagine the work that went into it. You cannot imagine what I sacrificed to be capable of it. I made it two years ago in Gibson City. I have no papers, only my word— which should be good enough for you people. I— I pawned it.”

She said that like she was confessing something awful.

“I had no choice,” she said. “And then after what happened in Gibson I thought I should never see it again— well, I came to this city thinking to begin again, and what do I find as soon as I arrive but that
this
man is boasting that he created the piano himself and—

Her eyes suddenly widened still further.

“Oh—are you
all
in on it?”

“Well now,” Mr. Quantrill said, raising his hands. “Well now. This is between you and Mr. Rawlins, I think.”

Adela turned to me. “Where is it?”

“It sank,” I explained.

She laughed scornfully. Few people can accomplish this trick. I guess it is one of the things they teach young ladies of the Deltas, along with comportment and poise and table-manners.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Do you see it here, ma’am? I tried to save it, but it went down with the boat. There was an incident involving an Engine.”

“How can I believe a word you say?”

“It isn’t what you think it is,” I said. “You’re seeing wickedness where there’s only the usual run of accidents and bad luck and confusion. Listen—”

“I’ve heard enough.”

Well, this all went on for some time. I tried to explain. Adela accused and demanded that honor be satisfied. I want to say that I made a decent effort to talk her out of that course of action. I said that we should resolve our dispute through words. She accused me of cowardice. I said that I did not know how things were done down in the Deltas but out on the Rim young women did not duel— well, of course that was not the right thing to say— my excuse is that her gun was still menacing me and I could not think straight. I was in fact starting to get angry myself. I offered to write a letter to Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson at the
Evening Post
correcting his misunderstandings and giving credit where credit was due. She said that made no difference— the insult was already given— she was not here to haggle or litigate, but to resolve things with honor. Besides, she would not believe that the piano was lost, but maintained that I had hidden it somewhere or dismantled it for parts.

I was not sure whether she was very brave or whether she was a young woman in a kind of panic— it seemed likely to me that she had not eaten right or slept in a safe place in many days, and I knew what it was like to have one’s one and only scrap of pride and hope in the whole big hostile world snatched away. I did not want to be shot and I did not want to shoot her, because
first
I am not a violent man, and
second
she was a woman, and
third
I recognized her predicament and understood that my careless boasting was partly to blame, and above all
fourth
because the mind that built the self-playing piano was too precious and beautiful to waste.

On the other hand I am only human and you can call me a thief and a liar and a coward only so many times before I get mad.

I said “All right, damn it— you’ll have your duel.”

She instantly calmed. It was as if I had promised her something of great importance. She lowered her gun and said, “Thank you, Mr. Rawlins.”