The Rise of Ransom City (40 page)

I passed the day after that mending the damage the Apparatus had done to the Ormolu’s basement, until I was exhausted and hungry and filthy with the sweat of a hard day’s work, and all in all I was in no fit state to do what I did next, which was to dress up as smart as I could in borrowed clothes and swallow my fear and strike out for the Floating World.

To get to the Floating World from Swing Street you had to walk north toward the river. On the Fenimore Bridge I was importuned by flower-sellers, match-sellers, beggars, recruiters, and prophets of the end times. A devotee of the World Serpent informed me that one day very soon that famous reptile would swallow itself up entirely, and us with it, and he illustrated that proposition with a gesture that reminded me uncomfortably of the Ransom Process. I gave him a half-dollar.

The evening was hot and the sky was the color of the deep sea, with ink-blot clouds of black. If you stood on the edge of the bridge and looked north and waited for dark to fall you could see the Floating World. It stood on the cliff’s edge atop the bluffs north of Jasper. It was a tall building of many rooms, sprawling like a millionaire’s mansion, and at night it was lit by a thousand red lanterns that hung from its eaves or from the trees or from the arches in the rose-gardens. . . . Anyhow as the city below darkened the Floating World lit up and it shone through the trees.

My coat was made for an actor who was bigger and taller than me. I carried a gun beneath it. I do not know why. If the rumors were true, and the Floating World was a haven for the Agents of the Gun, and if they sniffed me out, it would do me no good.

When the city was fully dark and the stars were out and the Floating World was burning red like a coal I set off again.

North of the river the city climbs the foothills. The city thins out as the road gains altitude until there is just one path that winds up among rocks and the trees into the heights. At first that path is dark. Later there are lanterns. It is wide enough for the narrow sort of coaches, and you had better watch your back in case one comes thundering past. Some men walk up alone, like I did, and others go in drunken packs, laughing and joking and slapping each other on the back.

The Floating World is a thing of the past now— a long-gone monster, like the mammoth. That is why I mean to take the trouble to describe it. In those days it stood in the middle of lawns, rose-gardens, white marble statues and other such luxuries. There were men in the garden and arm in arm with or sitting beside them on the benches there were women, most of them in scarlet and black, in all kinds of states of undress. I followed a twisting path, glancing from side to side. I met the cold and indifferent gaze of a woman who stared right through me like I was a ghost, while a silver-haired gentleman slobbered at her throat. Three women curtsied in the elaborate old-fashioned style for the entertainment of a Reverend of the Smiler brethren, whose grin was not of the spiritual kind. And so on and so on.

Now I have traveled all over the Rim in wild and lonely places and I do not claim to be an innocent, but I did not like the Floating World. It was as if I saw my sister’s face in the face of every woman there, and I did not like it at all. I have done things I am not proud of to get by and I do not judge what anyone does to make a living, but nonetheless I did not like it.

The path led me to two big doors with glass windows spilling light. Soon as I stepped through them it felt like I was washed away in a swell of music and perfume and alcohol and cigar-smoke and laughter both false and real, but mostly false, and then I was standing by a counter of some lacquered and intaglio’d red wood and a woman with a smile as wide as the World Serpent’s must be was wishing me a wonderful evening, and inquiring as to my desires. She had a tattoo of a serpent all up one arm and around her wrist, and she was toying with the corner of a page of a ledger of some kind. My desires were mostly not the sort she could service, being more along the lines of striking one of those gentlemen of Jasper in the face or running away at once or both. I held my hat to my chest and stammered like a hayseed.

“Well, ma’am, I don’t know, I don’t rightly know, I am new in town, it’s all just about more than a body can . . . I mean I don’t know, miss. I feel overcome. Back in Hamlin we never had any such . . . or I mean to say . . . Well maybe I should sit down . . . may I?”

I sat heavily on a bench and began to dab at my forehead with a handkerchief. Another guest took my place in the woman’s attention.

I sat with my hat in my lap and I watched the crowd.

It was an immense room, with paintings and green plants and fireplaces on every wall and shadowed corners. I shall not say who I saw in it because I do not always know who survived Jasper’s fall and who did not, and maybe those who did not survive had wives or children who did. Suffice it to say that many of the great and the good of Jasper attended the Floating World. It was what the sophisticated people of the big cities call an
open secret,
I guess. I did not see Mr. Baxter but I saw men who I believed from what I overheard of their conversation were notable in just about every other business or faith or union in town. That is not to say that I did not also see hayseeds and rubes and prospectors with filthy hands and their hair slicked back attempting to ape what they imagined were the manners of city gentlemen. Desire is a great leveler. I saw no fewer than half a dozen Senators, or I think I did, because like I have said all Senators look much the same to me. Three of them were laughing together over some joke, which the women they’d bought pretended to find funny. A fourth came and joined them and said something and suddenly none of them were laughing.

A very tall and very beautiful red-haired woman walked across the room and the crowd parted for her. She met with a man in a fine white suit and they spoke together for a while, arm in arm. It looked like a very important conversation, and I was sorry I could not hear what they were saying.

Half an hour had passed while I watched. No Agent of the Gun appeared behind me, weapon pressed to my back, all evil grin and twirling mustache and sulfurous breath whispering in my ear
There you are at last Professor Ransom.
. . . I got emboldened. I bought a drink for a young lady.

“I mean no offense,” I said to her. “No one could say you’re not pretty. But I’m kind of homesick, you see. Where I’m from everyone has skin kind of like mine— it’s a little place out West, you won’t know it— and I’m looking for a girl of a similar complexion. The heart wants what it wants, you know? Is there—?”

That kind young lady pointed me to another young lady who pointed me to a third, who I approached through the crowds and heat and smoke of the room. It was only when I got close to her that I realized she was not a flesh-and-blood person, but a remarkably lifelike part of a painting on the wall. I am not sure whether I had been pointed toward her as a joke or whether I had got turned around. I stood by the wall for a while and studied the painting. It was a mural, depicting a scene in the garden of an old-world prince’s palace, and as a man of the theater I took a professional interest in the tricks of perspective it played.

There was a scream from the other side of that wall. Neither the music nor the laughter stopped for it. Still emboldened, I investigated. I explored along the wall until I found a door, in the midst of a painted grove of ivy and shadows. I breathed deeply, touched the gun beneath my coat for luck, and opened it.

The door opened onto a very long corridor, with many doors on either side. It was lit by two red lanterns at its mid-point and beyond was a hazy red darkness. Out of that darkness a figure came forward.

Well I shall not play games. It was my sister Jess. She was a little thinner than when I last saw her and her hair had been cut short, and I guess all I could say about her outfit was that she has always been her own woman and it is no business of mine to judge. I was so overjoyed to see her that a tear came to my eye.

Speaking of eyes— hers widened. At the same time her mouth drew tight and thin. She made a gesture that when we were young and always sneaking into things meant
get out.
I guess you could figure out what it meant too, if you saw it. It was forceful.

There was that scream again, from behind one of the many doors.

Another figure came up behind my sister. It was that tall and beautiful red-haired woman, for whom all the crowd had parted. It made me dizzy to see her, because only moments before I’d seen her, or I’d thought I’d seen her, back in the room behind me, talking to Senators and Reverends and businessmen. She put a hand on my sister’s shoulder. My sister was still miming
go
but now only with her eyes. I did not. I was frozen. It was not until the moment I saw her that I recalled John Creedmoor speaking of his onetime colleague
Scarlet Jen of the Floating World
. I tried to push the thought from my mind. I felt like that woman could read what I was thinking the way Amaryllis pretended to and for all I know she could.

Behind me there was the sound of a gunshot, then cheering and laughter. Somebody stumbled backwards into me. I shoved him aside.

I swear I did not see either of them move but the next thing I knew the red-haired woman was on the far side of the big room, directing her guards to seize and question the unlucky gunman, and my sister was gone.

The gunman, as it turned out, was drunk and had pulled out his weapon and shot at the ceiling not out of malice, but by way of celebrating a piece of very good news that had just been whispered to him. Now that good news was leaping from ear to ear all across the room and back again, and although I was more concerned with what the hell had happened to my sister it found its way to me soon enough. Like they said in the newspaper the next day:

THE BATTLE OF JUNIPER CITY

Events in our one-time peaceful sister city of Juniper are on the march too quickly for your humble correspondent to keep pace. Last I wrote Governor-Elect Voll had declared independence from the Three Cities. Two days ago Governor-Elect Voll declared Juniper’s support for the reborn Red Valley Republic, that ill-fated empire of the western territories, that we had all thought long-gone. Reports from the High House are that Voll is now dead, murdered mid-speech by an uncaught assassin. Yesterday the forces of the Line came to Juniper, with Heavier-Than-Air Vessels and Ironclads and marching men. Today those forces have been beaten back, all the way to the banks of the River Ire, where it is said that the Angelus Engine itself was destroyed. How was this impossible feat accomplished? Lieutenant-Governor Bloom denies that the city’s armies were assisted by that Adversary of the Line, but also of all Decent People, which I shall not name here. Instead he says that the notorious Doctor Eliza Alferhussen and the one-time Agent John Creedmoor have entrusted their mysterious “weapon” to Juniper. Rumors fly thick and fast. Your own humble correspondent his own self has been pressed into the Second Juniper Irregulars, and writes from a tent on the banks of the Ire.

I guess by the time the news was out and had filled the whole room all the best business-deals were already made, and all that was left was for the yahoos and bumpkins who were last to hear it to celebrate or panic as they saw fit. There was only one gunshot but a whole lot of hooting and hollering and fists slammed on tables and glasses thrown and women treated roughly. I could not see my sister in all the chaos. The red-haired woman was surrounded by several Senators who all wanted her ear, and she seemed to have forgotten about me. The flames in all the room’s many fireplaces leapt higher and higher, cracking and snapping and charring the edges of rugs and couches and scarlet dresses and the feathers some of the women wore in their hair, not to mention their hair. I cannot say if the flames were celebrating or panicking or both. I fled, out through the back doors and through the rose-garden and down into the city below.

I ran all the way to Adela’s apartment. I was eager to tell her the news about Juniper. I changed my mind a dozen times on the way down, sometimes thinking I would say that we should flee at once, sometimes thinking I could enlist her in a scheme to save my sister— I entertained a number of wild schemes involving disguises, tunnels, rope-ladders, hot-air balloons, and I don’t recall what else. I do not know what I had decided or if I had decided anything as I knocked on her door. Anyhow I regret to say that she did not answer.

I started to worry.

I went back to the Ormolu. It was late and dark and even Swing Street was empty. I was afraid with every step that Scarlet Jen of the Floating World would swoop down on me, red dress billowing like wings— well, it had been a long night and I have a fanciful kind of imagination, as I guess you know by now. I held on to my gun under my coat. I entered the Ormolu and fell into bed. I was too tired to undress but could not sleep in my own attic room because of the light of the moon and the bigness of the sky and the occasional sounds of shouting from the street, so I went down into the basement and lay on my back on the warm earth where the Apparatus had been. That was where I was when Mr. Baxter’s detectives caught up with me.