The Half-Made World (65 page)

Issues tabled for the day: the hunting of the beast—should they continue? Or change tactics? The need for new irrigation on the south fields. Sally Morton stood and haltingly delivered a speech on the importance of infant education, which appeared to end without a point. A Mr. Dilworth’s proposed adjustment to the rules of parliamentary cloture was soundly defeated, as if he had proposed a dirty thing, and Dilworth himself slunk off to angry stares.

Lastly, they discussed what was to be done with the General, what was to be done with these rumors of approaching enemies. The crowd shifted eagerly, tensely. President Hobart took the podium. The young man on Liv’s left stood and clapped furiously. The old man on her right sat in wary silence.

Captain Morton sat two rows in front of Liv, sticking out in his red cavalry jacket among the gray brown of his neighbors like a peacock among hens. He did not clap. He sat very stiffly. Sally held his arm and leaned close to him.

Liv stood. There was a hush around her.

“President Hobart. The Line will find us here soon. Creedmoor will find us. You must evacuate the women and children. You have forgotten what the Line is
like,
what their weapons are like. You must make an alliance with Creedmoor, against the Line, for the sake of—”

The crowd roared with disgust, drowning her out.

Liv examined the President’s face as he scanned the crowd—arms outstretched, hands clutching the podium. He smiled at his people. He waited for them to quiet down.

President Hobart’s eyes met Liv’s. He leaned down and whispered in his aide’s ear.

“President Hobart, I propose that—”

A young man put his hand gently on her arm and said,
“Ma’am.”

Soon Liv was politely removed from the meeting hall. The aide escorted her across town—in apologetic silence—then left her, jogging back to the meeting briskly, his back receding in the rain, his hand on his cap.

Liv was alone—which was for the best, since she wasn’t sure she could speak. She felt quite stunned. After weeks and weeks of reading the history of the Republic, daydreaming of it, conversing with its fallen General—after all that, to find it, preserved as in a museum—and to be
shut out
—it was
baffling
.

They had refused her help. They did not want her advice. She was of no importance, powerless to affect her fate. Her safety depended entirely on Hobart’s wisdom, by which she was not impressed.

She wandered the town, sometimes shaking her head, sometimes smiling. She went west and quickly reached the walls, and the moat, and the guard towers. She waved to a young man high overhead, who held a rifle. He waved back. He wore a bright red officer’s cap. His father’s?

Beyond the moat, the oaks pressed in. A cool and inviting darkness. Liv considered fleeing into it. Abandoning the General. Creedmoor might not look for her now. Sharp mountains rose beyond the forest, purple in the west. The sun was starting to set behind them, making the snow on their peaks a shining brazen rim. The rain, still falling, thin and cold, glowed in the failing light. That morning, the impossible western sun had risen blazing from behind those mountains.

Liv took two steps closer to the bridge, and a young man stepped in front of her, blocking her path. She recognized the face—the unfortunate witch’s wen on his nose. Was it Blisset or Singleton? She’d not seen them since they found her in the woods. He remembered
her,
of course. He shook his head. He would not meet her eyes.

“You are quite right, sir,” she said. “It is late for a walk in the woods. I might get lost in the dark.”

“Quite right, ma’am.”

“You’re very kind to your guests.”

Liv turned back. She walked New Design’s muddy streets. They were laid out in a finely planned wheel, which she had to concede was rational and elegant. It stood—Morton had explained—for some principle of order or organization that the Republic held dear.

The lights were coming on in the windows. Oil lamps or hearth fires, according to the stature of the houses. A golden haze in the evening rain. In Liv’s mind, New Design was a rolling wheel broken off from a beautiful gigantic machine, some glittering clockwork of government, spinning free, diminished and alone, finally falling here, far from its parent. In a ditch. In the dirt. In a quiet distant field. Still spinning, these little lives caught in its spokes. The General had built to last.

This place was a miracle! Liv felt a sudden affection for it. It was a shabby miracle, no doubt, a tired miracle, its people falling into smallness and fixed ways—but it was the last of something splendid. Each of these people had been touched by greatness; they had seen a finer world.

As she idled through the rainy streets, Liv dreamed of saving them. A speech, perhaps? A plan, a scheme, some ingenious reversal or stratagem that might turn back the Line. Or somehow leading them farther into the West, to safety . . .

For the General’s sake, they had to survive.

For the world’s sake, they had to survive. If they never returned from the West, if the world never knew of them, so what? The world was a finer place while this dream persisted.

Liv passed by Dr. Bradley’s house. There was a long low cabin beside it, where the hospital beds were. Captain Morton had pointed it out to her. It was every inch a soldier’s camp hospital. There were three men loitering outside the canvas-curtained door, two with rifles. All with spears and swords.

Liv stood across the darkening street from them. Her hair and clothes were quite drenched now, but she’d long since ceased to care. Cold had not killed her yet. The dark-haired young man with the finest and most silver-filigreed rifle caught her eye, then snapped his head straight again and pointedly ignored her.

The General was there, of course. Held in secret and locked tightly away like a treasure the town didn’t know what to do with. It made her think of those fairy tales in which a stranger brings a chest of gold, or a goose that lays golden eggs, or a wondrous machine that weaves invisible threads, or a spirit that answers every question put to it and knows every hidden secret, or what have you, into a simple village not prepared for such intrusions of the wondrous or the significant; tales in which the peasants’ greed for the strange treasure would lead them to idleness, to anger, to violence, to wives poisoning husbands, to sons murdering fathers out in the empty fields; and in which, always, the headman, or mayor, or priest, would lock the treasure away, or bury it in the hills, hoping to bring peace again, and sometimes that would work, and sometimes it wouldn’t.

Liv wondered if the President came to visit the General, at night, in secret, to stare at his blank ancient face. She wondered about Woodbury, about Morton, about Peckham, about Warren—who was privy to the secret?

Liv could hardly blame them for trying to hide their plans from her. She’d brought their hero to them, yes, but not for
their
sake, not for any sane reason at all. She’d brought him ruined. She’d come out of nowhere. And above all else, she had come in the company of an Agent of the Gun. She was tainted by her association with Creedmoor. She could hardly fault them for feeling that way; she sometimes felt that way herself.

Where
was
Creedmoor? Had the monster got him, or the Line? Had his masters reclaimed him? She felt very alone.

CHAPTER 46

CREEDMOOR IN THE SHADOWS

—They’re gone.

—You should not have left them alone. But we will forgive you
if
you find the old man again.

Creedmoor came running, cursing, and crashing through branches that whipped his face and tore his blood-soaked clothes. He knew when he was half a mile away from the clearing where he’d left her that Liv was gone, and she’d taken the old man with her. Their scent had gone stale—and there were
strangers
.

—Not the Line. I know their smell. The red men.

—Who, Creedmoor?

—What the Folk woman called them.

—We forgive you for talking to her, Creedmoor. Nothing matters but finding the General. Run faster.

The voice in his head was on the verge of hysteria now. Beneath its calm flat tones there was an echo of shrieking. If it didn’t hurt so much, he would have found it funny.

He burst out into the empty clearing.

—Gone. Creedmoor. You went trophy-hunting, you abandoned your charge.

—I left him with Liv.

—The woman has betrayed us. You should have killed her.

—Maybe.

—If we find her, you must kill her.

—We’ll see.

Creedmoor left the clearing behind.

—Faster. Take to the heights.

So he rose into the high crown of the nearest oak, ascending in slow forceful leaps from branch to branch, through the cold canopy of leaves, standing at last on a single narrow uppermost limb, a green sprig, wrist thin, which he willed to bear his weight. He looked out over the green world, east, back the way he’d come.

—They’re coming. Faster, now. Closer.

—Yes, Creedmoor.

—We had a week or more’s lead on them when we went hunting that serpent. How did they come so close?

The Linesmen weren’t in sight yet, and there was no stink of them on the wind—stale sweat, grime, coal dust, fear and shame—but Creedmoor could
hear
them, the thudding of their flat feet, the wheezing of their fat throats, the rattle and dull clank of their rifles and bombs. And the treetops shivered with their passing below.

—While you were idle, Creedmoor, while you were adventuring, they gained on us.

—We’ll lose them again.

—Our Enemies close in around us. The world narrows as we reach its edge. We feel a trap, Creedmoor.

—Linesmen are too stupid for traps. Without their Engines, they are stupid. Simple bad luck is our only enemy.

—Ordinarily
we
are the bringers of bad luck, Creedmoor.

He caught up with the Linesmen a little after dark. They marched through the night holding buzzing electric torches, wheeling their heavy guns, heads down, wordless, implacable. He crept apelike through the branches above them and watched them go by—from a safe distance, of course. Linesmen did not, as a rule, look up; they were afraid of the sky. But still, they had
devices,
so it was safest not to go too near.

It was hard to count their numbers—the Linesmen but scattered among the oaks in groups of twos and threes. It was out of character. Generally, the Linesmen marched in columns, in accordance with their Manual of Operations.

—Discipline’s gone lax out here.

—They are far from their masters, Creedmoor.

—They become more like us.

—They are a rabble. They are machines, breaking down. Do not indulge in sympathy for them.

—Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten how to hate. They’re moving fast. I’ve never seen them move so fast without their machines.

—They are loyal to their masters, Creedmoor.

—They know where they’re going. How do they know where they’re going?

—We do not know. A machine?

—Maybe. I guess maybe one hundred fifty of them?