The Rise of Ransom City (50 page)

Mr. Nolt told me that his men were assaulting the Floating World that night.

“Informing you, sir, in your capacity as chief executive. You see some of the men to be used in the assault are detectives in the employ of the— in your employ, now.”

“What do I care? But if you’re—”

“You see sir the bitch has holed up there— who can be sure how many men she has with her. There are tunnels under that place or else we’d use rockets, you see. Who can be sure what kind of awful things go on down there. It’ll be bloody, that’s for sure.”

I stood. I seem to recall I was wearing one of the old man’s white nightshirts, finely made in the fashion of bygone decades, faintly malodorous.

“I don’t care about your men, Mr. what ever your damn name is, but my sister Jess is up there. Down there. It’s not her fault—”

“I know, Mr. Ransom, sir. We know very well where everyone is. Now I can’t make any promises, this thing has to be done and it has to be done fast, but maybe we can make an effort to see she comes to no accidental harm— you see you can be sure we know what she looks like, you can be sure of that. But you see you’ll have to be accommodating in return.”

“I think I’ve been accommodating enough, Mr. Nolt.”

“As you please, sir.”

He turned to go. My nerve failed me.

“Wait—Nolt, wait.”

He stopped in the doorway.

“Nolt—You’ll see she comes to no harm?”

“Well,” he said.

That is why I gave that speech at the premises of one Mr. Baxter’s munitions factories— now my factories. I dressed up in a fine black suit and I stood among the idle machinery and I spoke to the workers. Normal business would be resumed very soon, I promised them. The crisis would soon pass and order would be restored. Things would get better and better forever thereafter. Those who remained loyal and law-abiding would receive raises. As soon as the crisis was resolved there would be work for every able-bodied man in Jasper, mass-manufacturing the Bomb. Applause, cheering, stamping, caps thrown in the air. I am good at giving speeches.

The assault took place that night. A dozen of the Vessels converged from all four corners of the city— I watched from the window of the old man’s Tower as smoke trails criss-crossed the night sky. The Vessels climbed the bluffs and circled around and around the grounds of the Floating World, shooting at windows and gunning down whoever they saw in the rose-gardens or canoodling on the benches among the ivy— it was Mr. Nolt’s opinion, he told me, that nobody in such a filthy place could be innocent.

I did not see the fighting but I heard about it, because I was permitted to wait in the Big Office in Mr. Baxter’s Tower while the assault took place, and the reports that came in on the telegraph machines were translated for me.

By the Big Office I mean the place where I first met Mr. Baxter. That was what we called it. It was full of telegraphs and Linesmen in uniform. I was still wearing the black suit but I had loosened my neck-tie.

Initial reports were promising. The Vessels encircled the grounds, preventing escape. A group of two dozen detectives approached the premises. They offered a warrant before smashing down the door. Girls screamed, Senators threw themselves on the floor and begged for mercy. The detectives took names and confiscated weapons.

“You see,” Mr. Nolt said, nodding as he scanned the reports that came in on the telegraphs. “You see.”

“What about my sister, Nolt? You promised she’d be safe.”

“I promised we’d try, Mr. Ransom, sir. We’ll see, won’t we?”

The detectives broke into the cellars and hauled sobbing women out of their hiding-places. They wrestled hand-to-hand with Jen’s men in the tunnels. They beat them with sticks to the floor. They strapped them to chairs and questioned them. Jen could not be found.

“Well,” Mr. Nolt said. “She thinks she can hide? Run? We’ll see about that. We’ll see.”

Not a single one of the detectives died for the first forty-five minutes. After that they started dropping dead like it was their job to do so, each one shot without warning in the back, with no sign of the shooter— which was blamed in the reports that came back to the Big Office on the fact that it was dark in the Floating World, and all the women were in red and looked alike, and the flames in the fireplaces everywhere flickered and made strange shadows, and kept rising and rising and could not by any natural means be extinguished, until the surviving detectives were forced to retreat into the gardens. Fire leapt from the windows. The grass withered and the roses turned black and the statues cracked with the heat. Girls fled, their hair on fire. Updrafts of hot air and smoke made the Vessels unsteady— the rotary-wing Vessels shook like boats in a storm and three of them crashed. Canvas wings caught fire. Nobody was exactly sure how Scarlet Jen escaped but one of the Vessels went missing. One of the detectives reported seeing her standing on the burning roof as the Vessels wobbled by— it’s possible she stole it.

Mr. Nolt’s face fell as he read the reports.

“I see,” he said.

“What do you see? Look at me, Nolt. What about my sister? Nolt? What about my sister? You promised.”

Mr. Nolt placed the reports in a neat pile and walked silently out of the Big Office.

That was the first time I stood in the Big Office while the Linesmen worked— not the last. Standing in the Big Office I learned all about Gentleman Jim Dark’s various skirmishes with the occupying forces. By the time the Floating World burned Dark had organized a mob of several hundred men and in the days after the burning they put on a pretty good show, if that’s the sort of show you like. Mostly they burned and looted. Dark was everywhere in the city, rallying the mob, laughing and making speeches and handing out ill-gotten loot with aplomb. He invariably wore a top hat and a vest in the purple and gold of the Jasper City flag and in his speeches he compared his mustache to the horns of the Jasper City Bull. If there was any kind of strategic purpose to his activities I don’t know what it was, and neither did the officers of the Line. Later he told the newspapers that it was all only sport and maybe that is all it was to him. He was never caught but soon enough his mob shrank to nothing, while the number of Linesmen in the city only kept growing and growing.

I never saw Nolt again. After the fiasco of the raid on the Floating World he was replaced by a Mr. Lime, like I think I said. I guess they shot Nolt, or he shot himself, or he was sent to the front somewhere. I do not know. After the Floating World burned I guess you could say my spirit was broken. I was dead certain Jess was dead and that it was my fault. I had bargained and sold everything I had, I had given the Line everything they wanted, and I had not been able to do any good with it at all. I could not save anyone. I could not eat or sleep. I stopped asking about my sister and I stopped asking what they had done with Adela. I was scared to hear the answer. I remember that Mr. Lime came to me in the pent house and put papers in front of me to sign and I signed them just to make his face go away. Later they came to drive me somewhere to make a speech. I went with them without thinking twice. I did what I was told. It got easier every time. I stopped even day-dreaming of escape.

Two of the stagehands from the Ormolu died in the service of Jim Dark’s merry band. I learned this later from reports filed.

Mr. Quantrill from the Ormolu died in a stampede of cattle on Swing Street.

I can tell you how a lot of what happened happened, but not everything. I don’t know how come there was a stampede on Swing Street. All I know is that toward the end of the fighting somebody poisoned most of the cattle still penned in the Yards— I don’t know who. I would say it was the work of Jim Dark’s men but he always denied it. The Linesmen were baffled too. Most of the animals died. Some escaped their pens, maddened and frothing, charging through the city, and a few of them made it all the way to Swing Street, where Mr. Quantrill according to eye-witnesses stood in the street with his cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, frozen as the big beasts rounded the corner and came crashing down the street, like he was an actor playing at being a statue.

There were roughly one hundred Folk slaves in the Yards before the fighting started. Some time in the middle of things they escaped, leaving no tracks. I hope they made it out.

Mr. Elmer Merrial Carson remained in the city until the last possible minute, recording what he saw for posterity. At the time I wondered why he bothered but now I understand. After the
Evening Post
’s offices burned he moved into a house on the bluffs, from which he escaped by a back door when the detectives finally came for him. He fled the city by cover of night, taking only his typewriter in a suitcase. He has written about that better than I can.