The Rise of Ransom City (21 page)

There are more than a hundred of us now, and I no longer know everyone’s name. We are dreamers and drifters. The first of us were men and women of science. That’s what I say in every invitation to Ransom City that I leave nailed to hitching-posts or meeting-house doors or &c. Nobody will be turned away. It’s surprising who finds us. Seventh sons. Refugees. Traveling salesmen. We have more than the usual number of homosexuals. Jailbirds. Soldiers of every side. Men who disgraced themselves back in the War and a few who distinguished themselves. Edge-of-the-world types, for whom a trip into the unmade lands is all in a day’s work— solitary fellows who are silently happy to travel in a pack— men who would have been born Folk if they had only had the option. We have a couple of dozen men and women who left their homes back in ’91 to follow Liv Alverhuysen and John Creedmoor east, in what the newspapers at the time called the ’91 Dash or the Fools’ Pilgrimage or the Great Transcendentalist Nonsense, and who have been wandering ever since, looking for the next promise of salvation. We have more adherents of more faiths than I knew there were, not just the Smilers and the snake-handlers and the Silver City types but also—

* I got it all right, though it took a year to find me. It came in the mail. Subsequent Parts of Mr. Ransom’s story had less luck with the mail, and had to be painstakingly assembled over the course of many years, from scattered fragments. I acquired most of the Second Part fifteen years after it was mailed; I purchased it from a retired officer of the Line, a mail censor, and though I do not like censors I honor my promises, and he shall remain nameless. —EMC

The truth is that I thought we would have been arrested long since. I am a notorious individual. When I began sending out my letters I would have bet you I’d be arrested within the week. My letters were a poke in the world’s eye. I was tired of anonymity.

I cannot believe the Line forgives me for what happened at Jasper. I cannot believe the Gun has forgotten me. And yet here I am, still walking around free and making speeches and telling people how it will be in Ransom City and now I am thinking that maybe it will even happen. Maybe the world is changing faster than I thought. Maybe the Great War really is coming to an end. From time to time wreckage comes floating down the river, like a piece of an Ironclad’s tracks or a tangle of barbed wire. Who knows.

Why are they following me? Well, I’m a good talker. I made my living selling the impossible. I have the map— that precious map she gave me, of the way west beyond the settled world’s rim. There are not many like it. I am the inventor of the Ransom Process, which is our great strength and our only defense. I am mad in a way that infects others. I want to do one thing perfect and right and magnificent and that does not go wrong and if I have to build a new world for that to happen in then I will do so. I will go out into lands not yet settled by men and I will go out past lands settled by Folk and out past it all if I must.

Ransom City will be arranged in a wheel, I’ve decided. The circle is a perfect form and rich in significance, and also practical. We will expand in rings as others join us. We will build tall. It will be a city of elevators and buildings that taper into the sky. The spokes of the wheel will be treelined avenues, where there will be theaters and on the corner of every street self-playing musical instruments. No one will go hungry and everyone will have their share because there will be abundance for all, and every man will work on tasks that please him and suit his spirit. Women too. Children, especially. Each and every tree will be lit at night by the lamps of the Process. If anyone lives out there already there will be fair dealing— there will be peace between us and plenty enough for all without stealing. I am an honest businessman. It will be a new world.

Dick Beck’s back. He got in a scuffle with some fellows who blacked his eye and tore his shirt and bloodied his nose but he could be worse— he does not stop smiling. The letters are in the hands of Fortune now. I told him that in the new city in the unmade lands he’ll be Postmaster General, and I do not think he understood I was joking. Well, I guess somebody has to be. Anyhow tomorrow we move on. I should tear this up and start over.

This is the story of my second and third brushes with History. I am going to try to write as much as I can to night, by the glow of the Apparatus. This is the story of how I got to Jasper City and how I got rich and famous and how it all came to an end.

In the weeks and months after White Rock I wandered, drifting in no particular direction, first out west and then north and then back east. I was hungry for much of the winter. I took hard jobs or sometimes jobs of questionable legality. I presented myself as a man of the Smiler faith fallen on hard times and was given bread and shelter and lectures about perseverance and bootstraps. The Apparatus was gone and my savings were gone and my friend Mr. Carver was gone. Even my name was gone. I did not dare call myself Harry Ransom any more. After White Rock who knew who might be looking for Harry Ransom. I grew a beard and I let my hair go wild and I called myself by different names, like John Norton and Joe Reiser and others I forget.

I wrote a hundred letters. I wrote

Jess. I cannot tell you where I am so do not even wonder about it. Things have not worked out so well for your kid brother as he hoped and he has got himself into trouble again. The Apparatus came to nothing after all. The future does not belong to me after all. I hope you are doing well in Jasper City and that you are a famous singer or actress or what ever it is that you do on the stage, your letter did not say. Sometimes I wish I could come home. Yours, H.

Or

Hello May. It’s your brother. I was thinking of your letter and how you said you prayed for me, and I was thinking of the time back in East Conlan when we were children and I ran off into the woods and when I came back I said that I had been living with the Folk there, and I think that is the first time you prayed for me, or anyone prayed for me. At the time I was angry but now I know you meant well. Maybe you are right and I have been unwise. A prayer or two would not go amiss and I would pay you back in kind if I knew how.

Or

Mr. Baxter, I have never written to you before but you may have heard my name, I am an inventor or businessman like you. Your book about your struggle from rags to riches was a great inspiration to me and I know it just about by heart. In Chapter Three and again in Chapter Six you said that even in your lowest adversity you never despaired because you knew you were made for greater things. That is a good trick and I wish you would tell me how it works.

Maybe you read about what they are calling “The Miracle of White Rock.” That was my work. It was not exactly how they wrote about it in the newspapers but it was a hell of a show. One day it will change the world. I would like to talk to you one day. I am kind of in trouble but maybe one day a man of your stature might recognize a kindred soul and help out.

Sincerely, Professor Harry Ransom.

Most of the letters I wrote I did not send. I could not afford to. But I scraped together the money to mail that last letter to Mr. Baxter. Then I left town— I didn’t dare wait for an answer.

I stayed for three weeks in a town called Split Hoof, where I went by Joe Reiser and made a small living writing letters for other people, mostly about cows. That was where the rumors first caught up with me. A man came to the market with half-a-dozen goats and the news that a rogue agent of the Gun named John Creedmoor and a jet-black wizard called Ransom and a beautiful blond woman had invented an Apparatus that could kill the Engines of the Line or the demons of the Gun, and that they were bringing it slowly along the road east and north to the Station of Harrow Cross itself. He was known as a drunk and nobody believed him. I moved on anyhow. In the next town I read about the incident at White Rock in the newspaper.

I had no money to construct a new Apparatus. Even if I had money, I would not have dared. I did not know if I could. I did not remember how it could be done. I had saved a few of my notes and sketches from the disaster at White Rock, but when I looked at them now they were nonsense to me, like childhood poems or riddles. I sketched the mathematics by candlelight but could not make any part of it begin to balance. I could not even recall how the light of the Process had looked. When I passed back through the town of Caldwell I purchased dope from a man in an alley and lay all through a cold bright day in the street trying to recall the Light, and though I saw a great many strange things I did not see what I wanted. I missed Mr. Carver terribly.