The Half-Made World (6 page)

He passed the day in a deck chair with a romantic novel. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and warmed in the sun like an elderly alligator. The river shone white behind and blue ahead, and the broad plains were baked brown and encircled in the distance by dark pines and blue mountains. A few farms, no towns. No Line—not yet. The plains were a hazy emptiness, uninhabited land, a vast and vague beauty, not yet shaped or Made by anyone’s dreams or nightmares.

He ate no lunch. Sometimes he forgot.

A shadow fell over him and woke him. It was the girl, blocking the orange haze of the afternoon sun. She looked pale and nervous, and Creedmoor quite forgot what he’d liked about her. He also forgot her name.

“John,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. . . .”

John was his real name. He didn’t recall giving it to her, though admittedly he’d been drinking lately. He sure didn’t see how it was any business of hers to be using it. His face set into a scowl.

“This boat stops in Aral,” she said. “And from there it’s not too far north to Keaton, or even Jasper. And there’s work on the stage there, and everyone says I’m pretty enough. And I know you got money. And I know you’re smart, smarter than any of these boys here, and I don’t know what you do for money, but I know it ain’t regular, and what I mean is if you wanted to travel together . . .”

“I’m not going to Keaton. Or Jasper.”

“Wherever, then. I’m sick of working this boat, John. I want to see the world.”

“The world’s a bloody awful place,” he said. “This boat is as good as it gets.” And he pulled his hat down again, so he wouldn’t have to see the hurt look in her eyes.

Once she’d stormed off, he went back to his novel. He saw a happy ending coming, but he didn’t believe in it.

He dozed in his deck chair. He woke again in the evening, disturbed by the distant whine of ornithopters. Every one of his old muscles tensed, and a sour taste of fear rose into his mouth. He lifted his hat just enough to examine the red evening sky; otherwise, he was still. After a few moments he saw them, miles off, six black specks moving in formation high over the plains. Advance scouts for the Line. They bled smoke—they scored black lines across the sky. The whine became a drone then a clattering whir of iron wings as they passed overhead, and Creedmoor quietly pulled his hat down over his face. The drone faded again and he untensed.

He ate alone in his room, worrying boiled meat from the bone with his teeth.

Buffo put on a kind of show in the bar that night. The young man had slicked back his hair and pressed his suit and cleaned the blood from his boots, and looked quite handsome. He leaned on the bar and shouted over the noise of the boat. The black-haired girl was back with him. He was throwing money around and telling stories of how he’d won it—as he drank and swayed, his story shifted, so that first he’d been a famous gambler, and then he’d made his fortune running rifles to the besieged towns of Elmo Flats past the blockades of the Line, and then he’d robbed a bank in Jasper City, and then he’d invented a wonderful new headache cure but been cheated out of the patent by a cunning little Northerner.

If Creedmoor was any judge, every word of it was a lie, but Buffo’s audience only grew throughout the evening. Creedmoor drank alone. Sometimes Buffo caught Creedmoor’s skeptical eye and scowled, and Creedmoor smiled, and Buffo bared his teeth and lost the thread of his latest story. The girl seemed angry with Creedmoor, too. And those ’thopters had quite soured Creedmoor’s mood.

Buffo began a new story.

“. . . and that was where . . . that summer . . . after the, you know, after I was saying how I robbed that bank in Keaton, I mean Jasper, and . . . can I trust you all? Come closer, can I trust you to keep a secret? I fucking well ought to be able to, all the drinks I bought you . . . that was where I got
this
.”

The boy fumbled drunkenly in his jacket. He pulled out a small and cheaply made revolver, snagged it on his tie, and dropped it on the floor. He recovered it and then slammed it down on the table.

He said, “Yeah.” People drew nervously away from him.

“That
is
what you think it is,” he said, loosening his tie.

“Let me tell you. Let me tell you. They don’t recruit just anyone. Only the bravest and wildest are chosen by the Gun to be its Agents. They’d had their eye on me for months, I reckon—maybe since I did that bank in, in Shropmark, maybe since I broke out of the jail in White Plains, maybe since the shooting in . . . but that’s another story. Don’t touch that weapon. Don’t none of you even fucking
look
at it. There’s a demon in that weapon. A god in it. In
me
. That was—I was in a bar in, in that town, just by myself, just quiet, because you see what you people don’t know is that when you rob a bank, see, you have to stay quiet, you can’t go spending your money, you have to be even more quiet and innocent than if you were actually innocent, if you’re smart. And so a man came to me in the dark, and he was dressed all in black and he had a black hat and he had red eyes, and they say that’s how you can tell, because they’re not like ordinary men anymore.
We’re
not like ordinary men anymore. He sat down beside me and he said, ‘I’ve got a proposition for you.’ What would you say, what would you say if they asked you? I mean, they
wouldn’t
ask any of you—they take only dangerous men. They take only wicked men. They take only the worst of the worst and the best of the worst. Robbers and murderers and anarchists. I’ve been—I’ve known all of them, Abban the Lion, Blood-and-Thunder Boch, Dandy Fanshawe, Black Casca, Red Molly—I’ve had her—all the legends. All the stories. What would you say, if they asked? All that power. You’d live forever, or at least you’d never be forgotten after you’re gone. But the War . . . I mean the Line covers half the World. And it’s always growing. And it has Engines, and ’thopters, and bombs, and a million fucking men. And all Gun has is—is us. Heroes. Is it worth it? They can’t win. They can’t win. The Line’s going to get them all in the end. That’s—that’s what I’m doing here, see, I have a mission. A mission for the Gun, against the Line. I’m part of it. The Great War. I’d say it’s worth it. I’d say. I’d say yes if they—”

Buffo’s eyes were darting all around the bar. His audience was uncertain, drawing slowly away from him. The black-haired girl had busied herself elsewhere. He didn’t seem to notice.

“
Fuck
yes, it’s worth it.” He banged his weapon again on the table. He stood suddenly, swaying, and tore open his shirt to bare a wiry chest. “You can’t kill me. They made me strong. I’m not like you anymore. Shoot me. Shoot me or stab me if you dare.”

No one took him up on his offer. He didn’t say anything else. After a while, he wandered out into the night, snatching up his money but leaving the cheap revolver forgotten on the table. Creedmoor followed.

Creedmoor waited until Buffo had finished pissing over the side before he spoke.

“That’s a dangerous story to be telling.”

The young man turned and stumbled against the rail. His face was in darkness, but shafts of light from the windows crisscrossed his hands and body. The riverboat’s great paddle wheel turned and turned in the darkness behind him, and the night sky above was full of ink-black clouds.

“We’re a long way from any Stations of the Line out here,” Creedmoor said, taking a step closer. “And you’d know if any of the Line’s men were aboard, because they stink, and they’re stunted and pale, and you can always spot ’em. They grow all packed in together in their big cities, and the smell of oil and coal smoke never leaves ’em. And anyway they never go anywhere without their machines, and their vehicles, and their Engines. But even so. Even so. Rumors fly faster than birds and faster even than Engines.”

With the assistance of the rail, Buffo stood straight. “I’m not scared of Linesmen.”

Creedmoor paused and shook his head. “The Agents of the Gun, now, I hear you can’t tell them apart from ordinary men. Or even women. Except that every one of them carries the weapon that houses the demon that rides them and barks at them and makes them strong. Yes? But how would you know—because who doesn’t carry a weapon these days, and aren’t all weapons a little monstrous in their way? Fortunately the Gun’s Agents are few and far between, because you’re right—the Gun takes only the worst and wickedest. But if there were Agents aboard, they might not like your stories.”

Buffo shrugged.

“And these are neutral territories we’re passing through now, and these people are businessmen and farmers going to market, and they may be playing at being wicked people for a night while they’re away from their wives, but they do not love Agents of the Gun. The Great War will come to them eventually, they cannot stay neutral forever—Line is too greedy and Gun too ruthless—but for now they are neutral and happy that way. They may slit your throat in the night.”

“I don’t care what they think.” Buffo waved dismissively, and nearly fell over.

“They don’t care for bank robbers either, come to that. Not after the story’s over. How did you come by that money, really? Who did you kill for it? I’m curious.”

Buffo spat at Creedmoor’s feet.

“Fair enough.” Creedmoor spoke quieter as he came closer to where Buffo swayed. “And if there were a man aboard who’d retired from the Great War, he might not want you telling stories either. You might bring down unwanted attention. You might disturb his peace. You might bring back bad memories; you might with your lies tarnish glorious memories. A man like that might politely ask you to shut up, and get off at the next town, while you still have your money and your neck. What do you say?”

Buffo shoved Creedmoor’s shoulder and said, “Leave me alone, old man.” So Creedmoor, sighing, slapped Buffo’s hand aside and lifted him struggling by the collar of his shirt, and reached down into those depths of his spirit where that savage inhuman strength lay, and hurled Buffo over the edge, out into the night, arcing high into the air and far past the white water rushing over the boat’s wheel. The boy’s arms and legs pinwheeled in the air and coins rained from his pockets. He splashed down forty feet behind the boat in a slow dark bend of the river.

Creedmoor looked around; no one seemed to have noticed the brief struggle or heard the distant splash. Buffo’s tiny figure trod water, waving his arms and shouting, but the music drowned out his voice and the boat left him behind.

Creedmoor noticed that the boy had dropped a fistful of notes on the deck. His back ached a little as he stooped to gather them up.

The green-eyed girl waited on Creedmoor’s table that night. She kept looking around anxiously, as if wondering where her stupid young man had gone. Creedmoor tipped her well.