The Half-Made World (60 page)

“We do not
make deals
with the Gun.”

“Not with the Gun, but with John Creedmoor, Mr. President, who—”

“We do not make deals. That way lies corruption. If he comes here, we will kill him.”

“But—”

“The matter is closed.”

She studied his expression. His mind was quite clearly made up; he was seconds away from banishing her from his office. And perhaps he was right, after all.

“Very well. Where is the General? Can I see him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The decision has been made.”

“Mr. President, I believe I was making progress with the General. More through blind luck and patience than any great cleverness on my part, admittedly, but still progress—we have a bond, Mr. President, he has come to trust me. To need me. Something living in him reaches out. This is my analysis, do you understand? I do not speak idly. I have told you: I have reason to believe that he may remember something, that he may know something, that he may have
found
something, that frightens the Gun and the Line alike. That may perhaps be a danger to them. A weapon of the First Folk, which may put an end to the spirits that drive this world mad. An end to the Great War! It is essential that we—”

“There is no end in this world to war, madam.”

The President said this quite calmly. Liv was flushed, sweating. His tone surprised her. It occurred to her that she had nearly forgotten how to talk to anyone other than Creedmoor.

“What reason do you have to believe this, madam?”

“I . . . Creedmoor told me so. But—”

“Precisely. Madam—I shall speak plainly—is it any wonder that we do not entirely trust you? Please don’t take offense, madam; we are very grateful for what you’ve done for us. You can hardly imagine how grateful. You are an agent of providence, they’re saying, out in the town. My citizens are saying this. Certainly you are an agent of
something
. The General is restored to his proper place, and we will take care of him. What matters now is that you help us. That you show us you are
willing
to help us, do you see? That you tell us all you know of this Agent you traveled with. Wait; collect your thoughts. Be sure you are ready to tell all. All his
filthy
secrets.”

A snarl of loathing passed across the President’s face. The man’s smile wrestled its way back into place and he regarded her evenly; only his eyes betrayed the illusion of calm. “I want my planners and my officers and my War Secretary to hear this. Good men; don’t be worried.”

There was a heavy brass bell on Hobart’s desk. He rang it. There was a sound of booted feet approaching in the halls outside.

CHAPTER 41

A GUEST AT DINNER

They found Liv a room in Captain Morton’s house. Morton’s first wife had died—at the end of a long and productive life, Morton assured Liv, and of no contagious cause—and he had left her room empty, building a new bedroom for his new wife.

Morton’s house was larger than most in New Design. This was, Morton assured her, the result of his own hard work. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was among the first to go forward into the wilderness, or that he had been much decorated in battle.

“Though,” he allowed, “Not knowin’ how things are done here, ma’am, you might well think so. New Design bestows no honors, ma’am. New Design neither gives nor takes away from what its citizens build with their own honest sweat. That’s the foundation of all good government.”

“Is it, really? Thank you, Captain.”

It was hardly what Liv would have called a bedroom. It was a little square grotto of rough logs. It was dark. Like everything in New Design, it felt rather like a storeroom in a military campsite. It contained a few sentimental treasures. On a log-hewn table, in thick dust, were a silver hairbrush and dried-up glass perfume bottle and a silver hand mirror, which contained no glass. A shelf on the opposite wall held seven yellowing chapbooks: two works of religious instruction and one discourse (illustrated with machines, with pendulums, with beehives, with heart valves) on the power of the principles of divided government to channel the healthy industry of . . . And four romance novels, one of which was the very one Creedmoor carried with him. She dropped it like a snake. Guiltily she placed it back on the shelf.

She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The bed was made of wood and stretched hide. A few months ago, she would have regarded it as no kind of bed at all; now the comfort of it amazed her. She was quite unable to stay awake.

Liv dined that night with Captain Morton and his new wife. The second Mrs. Captain Morton—her name was Sally—was much younger than the Captain. She must have come to New Design almost as an infant—a strange life, Liv thought, and in fact, there was something not merely foreign but
alien
about her. She was a small brown thing who spoke softly, made very little eye contact, and seemed to be full of private thoughts—her expression was very shy or quietly, ineffably confident. She was heavily pregnant. Morton beamed with pride throughout the dinner, while his wife smiled silently and looked down at her plate, her belly, only occasionally lifting her dark eyes to look around. . . .

Everyone who was anyone in town was there to see the Mortons’ strange, impossible visitor. Squeezed around the long wooden table were, among others, two Justices of the town’s High Court, Justice Woodbury and Justice Rutledge, silver haired and bald respectively, and very grave in their bearing; Dr. Bradley, lame and hunched, short and wild haired and scarred, who beady-eyed Liv with frank suspicion; Mr. Waite, who led the town’s Smilers in their meetings, and who was young and pretty and as earnest as befitted his position; and dour Mr. Peckham, who ran the town’s farming operations, whom the others addressed variously as Overseer, Secretary, Quartermaster, and Chief. And their wives, of course, who each explained that they were the Secretary or Chair of some Voluntary Society or Organizational Committee or Educational Association or other, or more than one. . . .

Judges and doctors and meeting leaders looked exceedingly silly in furs and hides. Not, Liv supposed, that she looked any less wild. It was hard to be sure; there was no good mirror glass in all of New Design. Probably a mercy.

They ate near-deer meat and green leaves, boiled and spiced with some unfamiliar bitter herb. The deer meat tasted slightly of fish.

Morton led them in a toast to New Design, to the Republic, and to the General’s return. The assembled gentlemen gave low growls of approval. The ladies smiled and dipped their heads.

“They are saying,” Justice Rutledge said, “that it is a providence that has restored him to us. You are much admired as the agent of that providence, Mrs. Alverhuysen.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“It is an excellent irony,” Justice Woodbury offered, “that the General who fought for a Republic that taught us to disdain powers and providences and to, ah, to build, to build with our own hands. To build a world of man’s devising. Ah, if he has been restored to us by some preternatural providence. An excellent irony.” He creaked a smile and was rewarded with polite laughter, and some grave head-nodding from his colleague Rutledge.

“How is the General?” Liv asked. “Our long flight west was hard on him. Is he stronger now? Who takes care of him?”

There was an awkward silence. No one would meet Liv’s eye.

Morton coughed and spoke. “Ah, the General. The stories I could tell! I recall one day when we tented on the plains of Sarf. You were there, Rutledge, weren’t you? We were movin’ our forces southwest from Brenham—’64, ’65, it was. We were only one step ahead of the Line and . . .”

He leaned back and made wide vague scene-setting gestures.

“The plains were vast and golden; the grass was golden, too. Through our telescopes we could see them at work behind us. They built the Line as they went; we could see its smoke. The plains of Sarf throng with buffalo, as many of you know, and the Line’s thund’rin advance drove those magnificent beasts quite mad with fear. The Line scattered them like a broom scatt’rin mice. Stampede was always a danger. We were only one step ahead, all the way across the plains. We’d raid at night and then withdraw. We’d played that game all over a thousand miles of Sarf. A great arc! Like a bow. Tense like a bow. You’d not think it possible, but the Line was always only one day’s work from catchin’ us. They had dreadful machines with them that could flatten a hill and drive the rails as easy as you or I might saw a log. I don’t know that we even slowed them much. The Engine—I reckon it was Dryden Engine, but how could we be sure?—pushin’ forward at the tip of that line, like poison on a speat tip. We’d dealt them a terrible defeat at Brenham, you see, Mrs. Alverhuysen, and they hungered for revenge.”

Morton was a little drunk. He paused to swig.

“And yet when I brought the General his shavin’ mirror that evening in his tent, he was quite calm. Quite calm. Half the camp wakin’ from their first brief sleep in days of desperate flight. Half already at frantic work. We had slept in the hot afternoon and planned to continue at night. The General in his command tent, quite calm, trimmin’ his mustaches with a delicate golden scissors. Civilization is an important thing, he told me. There must be room always for a certain luxury. I was a young man at the time, Mrs. Alverhuysen. Though our enemies press us hard, we must not become debased and inhuman as they are. Understand that
in his own command tent,
the General had made room for various pale urchin-trash we had picked up in Brenham. Vicious boys from that vicious rat’s nest of a town, whom I regret to say we had left fatherless. Brenham, you see, had declared for the Line. What choice did we have? But there were so many survivors, who’d come out beggin’ after us. The General drove off the adults; the adults had made their choice. Had chosen the Line and must suffer the consequences. But these orphan boys! And probably girls; I don’t recall. The General had a soft heart. Some of our men bore a grudge against those orphans still, for their fathers’ wickedness, and so the General let them stick to him. Like dogs at his heels. Skulkin’ and snarlin’ in the corners of the command tent. Any lesser man would have left them behind; our plight was perilous enough. But the General paid his debts. He always paid his debts. And he kept that old Hillfolk creature—Rutledge, do you recall his name? Ka-Ka-Ka-something. Ku-Ku-Ku. A wiry old monster, pale as a dead thing, shuffling around half-bent-over. Like something risen from a graveyard, painted that awful red, rattlin’ bones and stones. No one else would go near him, but the General kept him close. Said he respected his wisdom. So there’s the measure of the man; he was not too proud to open our stores or his own command to the worst street urchins and uncanniest Folk; yet he
was
too proud to go unshaven though the Engines themselves pursued us.”

A rumble of approval went round the table.

“Kan-Kuk,” Liv said. “Was the Folk man’s name Kan—?”

“Something like that,” Morton said. “Not important.”

He leaned forward and continued.

“ ‘Spit it out, son, spit it out,’ the General said. I was waiting, you see, while he shaved. And he could hear the men gath’rin’ outside his tent. He could hear them grumblin’ and pissin’ and moanin’—pardon my language, ladies. He knew something was up. ‘I’ve sorry news for you, sir,’ I said. He kept his eyes fixed on the mirror, I recall, and snipped away at his whiskers. Such sharp eyes. I recall the General’s old Hillfolk monster leering at me from under all that filthy hair. Like he knew what was comin’ and it amused him. I recall the boys shiftin’, skulkin’ in the shadows. It was winter on the plains and it was dark in the evenin’, you see. And ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, ‘but the men are angry. Sorry, sir, but there are rumors.’ He asked me if there was a mob outside. I do believe he knew. I had to tell him that there was. Understand, madam, that we were hungry and frightened. We were trying to be better people, to be the new-model men of the glorious tomorrow, but we were hungry and frightened and tired. And there were witnesses. One of those boys we’d picked up in Bernham had been seen raidin’ the food stores. We’d taken them in out of the goodness of our hearts, we’d fed them as if they were our own, and yet they were thievin’. The men were angry. Such ingratitude! Such a lack of moral fiber! Corruption spreads from within, you know. There I was stamm’rin this out to the General. He looked up from the mirror and very quietly, he said: ‘Do the men demand a hanging?’ ”

Sally lifted her eyes and momentarily looked pained, as if she felt that the story was taking a vulgar and inappropriate turn. Her husband was far away, staring into the fireplace as he spoke.

“He handed me back the scissors and the mirror, and as I shut them away in the leather shaving case, he walked out into the evenin’. In nothin’ but his long johns. I followed after him. There was quite a crowd out there waiting. Respectful, of course. But the General was not wrong about their mood. More than one man who’d brought rope. Don’t know where they expected to find a tree out there on the plains. ‘If you insist,’ he said. ‘If you insist, there will be a trial.’