The Half-Made World (22 page)

“Right. Him. The defective. Yes, he’s on the manifest, we know. Disgusting. Anyone else? Anyone worse? Meeting anyone? A nice honest naïve young woman like you, a visitor to this part of the world, some handsome fellow talks you into helping him with something that doesn’t sound quite right . . . Do you know what I’m talking about? No? No. All right.”

Her head lolled. He snapped his fingers under her nose.

“Your purpose at this Hospital? Any particular patients in mind? Any . . .”

She drifted again. He slapped her and answers tumbled out. Then it seemed some more time had passed and he was hunched over, rummaging through her possessions. He sniffed at her flask of nerve tonic and snorted contemptuously.

“Opium-fiend, then. Unreliable. Oh, well.”

He left dirty thumbprints on her journals and creased the pages of the
Child’s History.
He lifted up her golden watch to the light and rattled it.

“Huh. All right.”

Other men entered. Two or more—she couldn’t count. Gray, black, indistinct. They opened briefcases and removed complicated metal instruments, pincers, spools of copper wire.

“She’s watching us.”

“Right. Sleep, Doctor.”

Someone’s hand reached out and pushed down on the plunger of the needle in her forearm. Something cold and annihilating rushed into the line of her veins, and she was flushed out of the light into silence and darkness. The black thundering singing monster these ugly men served carried them all through the night and along the silver web of the Line and across the dark continent into the West. . . .

In the morning, Liv remembered almost none of it. She had a vague recollection that some passing Linesmen had disrupted her sleep and been intolerably rude. She put her stiffness down to her prolonged immobility on hard seats. Imperiously she
insisted
on walking up and down the corridors to restore the healthy flow of blood and humors; the Linesmen grumbled but tolerated it.

They changed Engines at Harrow Cross. Three days after that, they arrived at Kingstown Station, the Line’s westernmost terminus. After that it was horse-drawn wagons on roads then dust trails, then mules, then finally she followed her local guide on foot. Liv’s watch started working again, and so she knew
exactly
how slowly they crawled over those broken red hills. Westward; out to the edge of things. There were ravens in the sky, and things stranger than ravens; in the distance she saw the heavy iron aircraft of the Line, droning and smoking, hovering like hawks. What were they hunting?

They descended a narrow slippery trail into a shadowed canyon, wide as the broad flat river that flowed beside the Academy, deeper than—well, certainly deeper than anything Liv could think to compare it to!

As they passed into the shadow of the canyon, there was a dark smoke-cloud on the horizon and she thought of war. Was the House safe? Of course not. Of course not! She had not come here to be safe. She ached, and she was tired, and she felt purposeful and strong.

Her guide pointed. “There.”

There was a fence strung from side to side of the canyon, and a gatehouse, and behind it loomed what could only be the House. It hid in the shadow of the canyon’s walls. It was a sprawling five-story mansion, painted in fading eggshell blue, with accents of a sickly white. Broad eaves like white eyebrows on an old man’s face stretched from side to side. Its upper windows gleamed bright, its lower windows were shadowed. Beneath it there were gardens, outhouses, and distant matchstick men performing what looked like healthy exercises.

There were guards at the gate, dressed in white. They straightened up as Liv approached, and reached for their rifles.

There was an echo of footsteps down the ravine. She looked over her shoulder; behind her a little group was approaching on foot. Some of them were dressed in rags, wild-bearded and blank-eyed. A handsome gray-haired gentleman led them. More visitors to the House? Patients, possibly. They looked like they’d had a hard journey. She wondered what their story was; she doubted it was as strange as hers!

CHAPTER 13

CREEDMOOR AT WORK

It had taken Creedmoor some twenty-four hours—after departing Kloan, in embarrassing circumstances—to find a suitable group to which to attach himself. It was a procession of the walking wounded, the mad, the blind, and the lame—mostly the mad. They were being escorted through the deep ravines by a weather-beaten man in a dusty white jacket, with a rifle on his back, who held the rope to which they were all bound wrapped loosely round his right arm. They were
en route
to the House Dolorous, and doctors, and the healing balm of the hospital’s mysterious
Spirit
—about which Creedmoor remained skeptical.

First he caught their scent. The mad were not great observers of hygiene. He stalked them. He crouched behind a red rock at the top of the valley and watched them shuffle along the trail below.

—Damn it, will you look at these people. Will you just look at them. Did you ever see such a slack-jawed and sorry bunch, shuffling along in the dust, in the heat? Moaning and mumbling: oh, look at their faces! This is no way to live. Oh, will you look at them. I wonder what side they fought for, before the madness took them. Maybe no side at all. Innocents, caught in the deathly machine. What a terrible bill of indictment against us all these are; each one a count we cannot answer.

—They fell because they are weak, Creedmoor. Now they are only
things
to be
used
.

—Well, that’s one point of view, certainly.

That sort of insincere agreeability irritated Marmion intensely, which was one of the few pleasures available to Creedmoor when he was at work.

Another was tobacco. He hunkered down behind the red rock, opened his tarnished tobacco case, and rolled a cigarette. He struck the match behind the rock so that the little procession below wouldn’t see the flash, cupping it in his dirty hands though there was no wind. He tossed the dead match into a clump of thorny weed.

—Oh, but will you just look at this one, in the front. Look at his flat cow eyes and his inbred’s weak chin and snaggled teeth and the way he shuffles. Look at the daft old bitch behind him with the hair like tumbleweed and the rags and the withered old gums in her mouth that’s sucking the air, look, like it’s sugar-candy. Fuck, will you look at the one with the
smile
. Look at these addled and ruined shufflers. This is so very sad.

—Never mind the madmen. Keep an eye on their leader. He is armed and watchful.

—Oh, sure, and he’s the worst of the sorry bunch. Look how proud he looks! Do-gooder. Who does he think he’s helping, running these people all over the backcountry, holding their hands and wiping their asses? Taking them to rot in hospital? No one will thank him. Kinder to kill them.

—For now we need them. Later you may kill them.

—I was joking, my bloodthirsty humorless friend.

—Were you? Good. We like our servants joyful.

Creedmoor smoked. The tobacco was stale and unpleasant. In the ravine below, one of the mad folk had fallen over, pulling his neighbors with him, and their white-jacketed leader was trying to help them to their feet.

—An ugly business. No words can hide that.

—But we do not like self-pity, Creedmoor. Go to work.

—One moment.

—Go to work.

—One moment.

—You are disrespectful, Creedmoor.

—Do you know, my friend? They say that the Engines of our great enemy communicate with
their
servants only at a distance, by telegraph wire, by electric cable.
Their
Song is too terrible for any man to hear nakedly, not without ending up like these poor bastards down below.
You
natter and nag in my ear like a badly chosen wife. What does it say about man, do you think, that we have such an easy rapport with your murderous kind? Nothing good. What does it say about
you
?

It did not respond. It was sulking, he thought; he’d offended it. They had a remarkable capacity for sulking. Their pride was easily stung. Sometimes Creedmoor imagined the dreadful and unearthly Lodge of the Guns as a windowless Old Folks Home where bitter old men sat in the dark and sucked their gums and moaned endlessly about forgotten wrongs, meaningless slights, ancient pointless feuds and grudges.

His master sulked and throbbed darkly until the little hiding place behind the red rock grew uncomfortable and close. There was a stink of sulfur. It was almost audible, like the place swarmed with wasps. And besides, the shuffling party on the dust road below was moving along, out of sight. He took a last bitter drag on his cigarette, put his hat back on his head, patted the pockets of his long gray coat, and stepped out into the glare of the red hills.

“Good day to you, sir. Now, now, put that rifle down! I’m no bandit; would a bandit walk out like this, alone, in the midday sun, no gun in his hand? Well, on further consideration, I guess a bandit
would
try to stop you here, at this narrow ravine, among these occluding rocks, and so I applaud your caution. These are bad times. I suppose the evidence on both sides of the question is finely balanced. I must throw myself on your mercy, on your trust in human nature. I don’t believe a man such as yourself will shoot me. I’ll wait here while you make your mind up.”