The Half-Made World (36 page)

—I loved her then. What happened to her?

—She died, Creedmoor. In the destruction of the Tilden Shipyards. Many years ago.

—So you told me. I was not there. We were enemies by then.

—She died. One day, so will you.

—She loved Abban, too, and therefore I tolerated him.

—He was stronger than you, Creedmoor.

—He probably was. Dead now, though.

—I remember once we fled together into the southern swamps at Black River—’63, ’64. Cypress and slime and shadows and black muck and stink. We hid together in a half-rotted hut that I would swear once belong to a witch. Why were we there? Yes. Yes. We were hiding a letter, I remember. A perfumed letter. It was to be used to blackmail a wealthy Smiler gentleman in Jasper City. Aircraft hunted us. Hot wet rain. Alligators. We ate snakes. Abban hated it, he was a desert creature. I cannot say it was a great pleasure for me. Two weeks together. We did not kill each other. That’s almost a friendship, isn’t it?

—We know all this, Creedmoor. We were there.

—Your servants are too good for you.

—You are drunk, Creedmoor.

—Yes.

It was dark. He stood and threw the bottles from the roof.

—I am drunk. Steady me.

He dropped clumsily from the roof, clutched hold of a drainpipe. He swung loosely for a moment. Something warm in the night air closed around him and steadied him.

—Thank you.

He climbed in through the window of Liv’s office.

He slumped down in her chair and rifled through her papers. The General’s file was one of the thick ones.

—She’s been busy. Look at all this. What does it mean?

—We do not know.

—Not bad-looking, either. No life for a woman, this.

It might as well have been in code. Perhaps it was.
Day 17—Card A-3; “church spire” (father? Cf. Card E-2, Day 9).
Rubbish!
Day 20—constant on axis 1, axis 2. Naumann’s Conjecture?
Cant!
Day 22 - 3 bursts f. current at .5
=
min. seizing; exc. sp. re: “horses” (cf 9, 12)
Gibberish!

“Please, Dr. A.,” he said. “I am a simple drinking man; can you not write in a simple honest tongue?” It was only thanks to a heroic effort of will, and Marmion hissing in his mind,

—Control yourself, Creedmoor.

. . . that he was able to resist the urge to rip the absurd things to shreds and scatter them petulantly around the room.

He caught sight of himself in the little polished desk mirror and realized that he was becoming unattractive. He pushed his sweaty hair back behind his ears and breathed deeply.

He stole the keys from Liv’s desk and stalked down through the empty corridors into the patients’ cells. He unlocked the door to the General’s cell and stepped inside.

The old man sat awake in the corner of the cell. Erect in his chair, dark liver-spotted hands folded on his lap in the moonlight. He fixed gray-green eyes on Creedmoor, who closed the cell door silently behind him and stood there panting, glaring.

He said, “Well?”

The General did not respond. And slowly Creedmoor realized that the General’s eyes weren’t focused on him, but on a point slightly to his left—the door handle.

“You want to get out of here, old man? Well, maybe. Maybe soon. First we talk. We talk about you. Look at me.
Look at me.
”

Creedmoor lunged across the room and held the General’s jaw tight in his hand, and jerked the old man’s face up so that he could glare into those empty eyes.

The old man began talking, grandly, gravel voiced, as if addressing a lecture hall:
“Once upon a time, there was a—”

Creedmoor cupped a hand over the old man’s mouth. He moved slowly, gently. He had not forgotten the Spirit hovering everywhere with its sticky maternal oppressive attention.

“No nursery tales today. Instead let me tell you a story of the old times, old-timer. There was once a man who everyone called the General, because he
was
a fucking General, a great man, unlike you,
sir,
rotting feebly in this piss-pot all day and all night. You who can’t wipe his own ass much less command an army.”

Speculatively, he let go of the old man’s mouth. No further babble came out of it.

“Good. This General. I don’t mean you, old man. I wouldn’t insult him by comparison to you. This
other
General commanded the forces of the Red Valley Republic. A bunch of ragtag border states and freetowns with big ideas. This was long years ago. Decades, I suppose. I was barely full grown back then.”

Drunkenly he paused to count on his fingers. The General’s eyes watched him.

“Yes. A boy. Only recently arrived in the West from Lundroy. I was not there at your battles. I was, in fact, a pacifist back then and a sometime sermonizer for the Penniless Brethren, or the Liberationists, or the . . .”

He stopped again. He had unpleasant memories of his time with the Liberationists.

“Yes. I was a different man then, too. I would have read in the newspapers the stories of your bloody southward course of conquest and clucked with disapproval, and shook my head and said,
Violence solves nothing; what fools
. I know better now. You will appreciate the irony, sir, a sophisticated gentlemen like yourself.”

He pulled up a chair and sat facing the General, leaning in close. “You were magnificent, sir! In the name of what cause was it—independence from Gun and Line and all domineering Powers? Constitutional and tricameral self-government, yes? Suffrage of all freeholders? Plunder and spoils? Virtue? Enlightenment? Women and wine? Art for art’s sake? I forget. Does it matter? You may feel free to answer me, sir, if it
does
matter. Friends of mine died today, and I do not know the reason, if there ever is a reason. Speak up!”

He held up his fingers in front of the General’s face and began to count down. “You conquered
first
Morgan, and
then
Asher, and
third
Lud-Town, and then . . .”

He ran out of fingers. “And then all the lands between Morgan and the Delta. I think you fought for a President, yes, or a parliament, or something; would you care to say which? I am not a political man anymore, and I was never a man for the fine details. They are
dust
now, sir, as is your Republic.” The General turned his face away to the window. Creedmoor held his jaw and pulled him back.

“Never mind politics. I have a better memory for battles. Your eldest son died on Hekman Hill. Died from a belly wound before reinforcements could arrive. Was it worth it? Was it worth it? From Gloriana and Victory and Harrow Cross, the Line came rolling across the land. And Gun came creeping by night. And your little Republic could not stand, sir, caught between those two great forces. But then there was that one last great battle. In Black Cap Valley, you held the Line back; you checked them. You trapped three divisions of the Line in that poisonous place, the muck and those evil flowers soft underfoot and sick-sweet and deadly and moist; and you flooded the valley with blood. You fed that valley so well with blood! Are you not proud? Were it not for lack of horses, at the end, they say, you might have outmaneuvered them; you might have
escaped;
you might have saved your forces. But no cavalry rode to your rescue, and so the dream died in blood. That was where your other son perished, is that not right? Damn you, answer me. I may break your spindly old neck if you do not. Nothing but the trickle of blood in that valley, the moans of the dead, the slurp and suck of mud. I would be very eager to know how you yourself escaped. And had you saved your own forces, perhaps you could have repeated the trick again and again. Who knows? Perhaps you could have held back the Line. There is a Station now in Red Valley. Arkely. Young but vicious. Does that not sadden you?”

Creedmoor had long since let go of the General’s face. The old man’s eyes were wandering idly.

“So you lived to fight another day and to lose another day, and another, and at last to fall to the mind-bombs and end up here, an
animal
. What need my masters have of you, I cannot imagine. What is it you know? What is it you
know
? We planned to bring you back home, back to our hidden places, where we could question you at leisure. The girls of the Floating World. Would you have liked that? But now we are under siege. Without you, I might be able to flee. I’m old, but I’m fast. But with you . . . Impossible. I am stuck here. Trapped. Do you know how I hate to be trapped? I shall go mad. So.”

He angrily unbuttoned his overalls and withdrew Marmion and pointed the heavy Gun’s barrel at the old man’s distinguished brow. “Tell me your secrets or I will simply destroy you now.”

—I will not fire, Creedmoor.

—Perhaps I will use my hands.

—If he dies, you die by the Goad, Creedmoor.

—Tell me what you want from him. What you know. Why they died.

—This is how you ask us to trust you?
No
, Creedmoor.

Creedmoor watched the General’s eyes wander. He watched them flick to the Gun’s black mouth and away again.
Oh yes,
he thought,
you know this
. He kept his grip steady.

And eventually the General’s eyes drifted down and down and locked onto his and the General’s ancient sticklike throat quivered and his mouth worked and he spat in Creedmoor’s face.

Creedmoor lowered the gun and laughed. He wiped his face.

—He remembers. Oh, he remembers
us
all right. There’s something in there. I should be a doctor.

—Never do that again, Creedmoor. He is ten thousand times more precious than you.

The General looked away, and when he turned back, his eyes were distant again, fixed on some point on the far wall.

“Once upon a time,” he said. “There was a . . .”

Creedmoor frowned.

There were footsteps in the hallway outside.

—This problem is beyond your abilities, Creedmoor. Now flee. Do not be found here.

He left by the window.

CHAPTER 24

BREAKING COVER

—Black Roth.

—I beg your pardon?

—Black Roth, Creedmoor. And Stephen Sutter. And Dagger Mary.

—Who the fuck are these people? Why are you waking me with this?

—Control yourself, Creedmoor. Your fear is beginning to disgust us. They are your brothers and sisters.

—I know none of these names.

—So? We do. They will be in Greenbank in two nights. They will join Fanshawe.

—Fanshawe! I know Fanshawe. Four, then. Only one I trust. They will help us? They will bring us to safety?

—We do not know. The Line is so strong. But they will only get stronger. This is our last and best chance.

—You are afraid, too.

—Get out of bed, Creedmoor. Go back to work. You are beginning to arouse suspicion. Be ready to move.

The next day, Daisy died. She died attended by shrieking nurses and one very badly shaken doctor.

It happened during Liv’s morning session with her. Daisy quite suddenly interrupted Liv and said: “Oh! I am so, so,
tired
of questions!”

Liv was astonished and delighted. “Daisy—Colla, I mean—Colla, are you talking to
me
?”

Daisy didn’t answer. Instead, she took a deep breath and held it. And held it. Her broad simple face went red and then purple and then blue. Her eyes remained quite clear and calm. Then she fell from her chair, and Liv rang the bell and summoned the nurses, who forced open Daisy’s mouth but were unable, even by pounding on her chest, to force her to breathe. The poor girl’s eyes remained quite calm until—and it seemed to take a terribly long time—Daisy finally expired.

Liv took three drops of her nerve tonic, and when she felt sufficiently recovered, she went to the Director’s office.

“It’s quite impossible,” she said.

The Director smiled sadly. “Nevertheless, it appears to have happened.”

“It is simply impossible, Director, for any person to . . . to injure themselves in that fashion. If it could be done, every sulking child in creation would have done it. The mind will not allow it.”