The Rise of Ransom City (46 page)

I do not know if Mr. Baxter’s people had a hand in this change in the public’s mood— I suspect so. Worse, Adela and I had a falling-out.

It was late summer. We were standing on the Rondel Bridge in a light afternoon rain. Adela had an umbrella and I did not. I used to say that after the sinking of the
Damaris
I had got as wet as I was going to in one lifetime and a little rain could not touch me. We looked down the river toward the place where she and I had nearly dueled— where we saw the submarine. The river was slate-gray and lonely— there was no traffic anymore from Juniper or Gibson City. She asked me what I thought I was doing and what I was going to do next. I said that I did not want to be a bomb-maker. She said that I had left myself with little choice. I said that I did not know about that, but I was sure would think of something, and she said that I was not a boy anymore and it was not a game. I took that badly and I told her that I believed she was just jealous of my sudden fame. She flushed and bit back what ever words came to her and turned and walked away. All I could see was the umbrella, joining a crowd of its fellows. I did not call after her to apologize. That is all I am willing to record of that conversation.

I guess fame had made me prideful and boorish. That does not take very long, as it turns out— it is as quick as a pot boiling over or the Process suddenly imbalancing and running wild. Anyhow I did not see her again for a while.

I continued to receive correspondence, and if the proportion of flattery was waning and the proportion of threats and condemnation was on the increase, well, it might always shift again tomorrow. I do not know how the letters all found me, wherever I was. There were letters pleading with me, there were letters accusing me of fraud, there were letters from people who said they remembered me from White Rock or the Rim. I received a letter from my sister May, at long last. It said that she had been removed from her religious community in the northern Territory and was being held in the custody of the Line at Archway Station, but that although the Linesmen were not religious and their machines were a form of blasphemy, she was not treated cruelly, and she prayed that I had not gotten myself and her into trouble that I could not get out of, because she could not help me and she did not think God was inclined to. The next day I received a letter from Mr. Baxter— it was the only letter he ever wrote to me, and it said nothing but
Ransom. Are you ready to talk?

I got letters in bulk from my fellow inventors. It turned out that I was by no means the only entrepreneur or independent thinker whose work the Baxter Trust had attempted to steal— there were dozens of us. I got letters from the inventors of pedal-powered flying machines, miracle cures, moving images &c— all of them laboring under Mr. Baxter’s lawsuits, forbidden to pursue their true calling, forbidden to call their work their own— most of them deeply mired in litigation in Jasper City’s courts, some of them in the ninth or tenth year of their hopeless struggle. Mr. Angel Langhorne was from the Deltas and had invented a process for making rain, and a whole new mathematics for the description of clouds, and he wrote in a jagged hand that suggested that he had just recently been struck by lightning from one of his own Cloud-Seeding Rods. Mr. Beckman was a Jasper City native and had invented a form of risk-free financial insurance. Miss Fleming had invented the perfect pendulum. Mr. Lung had invented a new kind of soap. Mr. Catchet had invented a new kind of machine-gun, as if there weren’t enough of those in the world already, but the muse cannot be denied. Miss Hazel Worth had invented a kind of asparagus that could grow in the most barren unmade lands of the Rim, boosting yields by an estimated factor of I-forget-what. Some of these people were in Jasper City— others were writing to me from the sticks. All of them were being crushed by Mr. Baxter’s greedy hand— I guess it is not the worst thing the Line does by a long shot but it did not sit right with me. Anyhow they heard of my fame and of how I was for while the toast of the town and how for a while even Mr. Baxter seemed scared of me, and I guess they looked on me as a kind of leader. They looked to me for inspiration. I did not want to disappoint. I wrote back— I wrote them all great long letters full of advice about sticking to your guns and never giving up and grit and drive and how the future belonged to the free-thinkers and the dreamers. In fact I did little else but write those letters for about a week. I wish I had one of them now because they were good words and I may never wax so eloquent again. It was while I was writing to Mr. Angel Langhorne that I first came up with the notion that all of us free-thinkers and dreamers together could quit the Territory and leave behind Mr. Baxter and his money and his Injunctions and leave behind all the armies of the world and strike out for the West and build Ransom City.

Adela found me again. I did not answer my door when she first knocked, because I was busy writing to Mr. Lung about Ransom City, and because most people who knocked on my door in those days were not people I much wanted to see. The last time I opened my door a woman spat in my face. The day before Adela knocked on my door a smiling gentleman had passed me in the street and tipped his hat to me and I was very much afraid that it had been Gentleman Jim Dark.

She knocked again, so loudly and fiercely that I thought maybe it was the detectives, my old friends the Pig and the Mosquito— poor old Plug-Ears having passed on to the next world, in which I hope he will be a better sort of person. You would not think such a small woman could make such a racket.

I sealed my letter to Lung and put it in my pocket and considered departing through the window.

She called out my name. I ran to unlock the door.

“Adela,” I said, “you look— well—I don’t know, my manners have deserted me, it’s the big city I blame for it— I don’t know how to say it right.”

Truth is she looked tired.

“Anyhow listen, Adela, listen to this, I want to tell you about Ransom City.”

“Harry—”

“A change of plans. Forget Juniper. Forget fighting. No more fighting. A new place— out on the edge. We’ll go together, you and me. Like back in the good old days with me and Carver.”

“Harry, listen.”

“Just let me read this letter to you. It’s to Mr. Lung. Let me tell you about Lung, he’s got ideas about public sanitation—”

“Who cares about Mr. Lung? Who’s Mr. Lung? Harry, you have to help me—”

“I have a plan. I’ve got it all worked out. It’s good you came, so you can hear it— I’m going to see Mr. Baxter again. Maybe tomorrow.”

“You’re going to make a deal with him?”

“I’m going to make him an offer. I’ve given them something to think about I reckon— the old man hasn’t been spoken about in the news papers like that in sixty years I bet and his masters cannot be pleased with him. Do you know what my father once said to me— he said, ‘Harry, you’re more trouble than you’re worth.’ I believe Mr. Baxter knows that now.”

“His men came to visit me last night again, Harry.”

“What they want is the Process. They must know they can’t have it by now, and the harder they try the more trouble I’ll make, until the whole city’s one big riot— now see what they really want is to be sure that the other side doesn’t get it. So my offer is that Baxter gives me my apology and we square our accounts and I leave town— leave the Territory— head out West to the Rim and beyond the Rim— an undisclosed location— me and a few brave souls who want to build a new place. Lung’s in, and Langhorne’s in, so we shall not want for rain or soap.”

She walked over to the bed and sat down on it. Adela weighed next to nothing but the thing was old and sagged anyhow, with a noise like a badly tuned organ.

“My father’s in debt,” she said.

“Isn’t he a rich man— a baron or something, I can never remember how things work down there—”

“Richer men have bigger debts, Harry. Not all of that debt but a whole lot of it is held by one of Mr. Baxter’s companies now, and his men let me know last night that he may just call it in. I don’t think they were lying. They showed me the papers.”

I sat down beside her, making the bed lurch like a ship at sea.

“I said I’d talk to Baxter— I said I’d come work for him, if that’s what they want. I said I’ll make what ever they want, and they can call it his. They said he doesn’t have time to talk to me. They want you— they want your bomb.”

“It’s not a bomb.”

“They’ll talk to you.”

“I guess they will.”

I thought for a while.

“I don’t know that I care much for your father from what you said about him, but I can plead his case too when I go see Mr. Baxter.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t know what that place is like. It’s full of their machines— it feels like the Engines themselves are watching you.”

“I’m coming with you and that’s that, Harry.”

The next day we went together to Fenimore Island and Baxter’s Tower. I wore my finest white suit. Adela wore a long black dress with dull sequins and frilled sleeves, that looked like she had taken it from the Ormolu’s ridiculous wardrobes. She was silent and grim.

It was hot and it rained. It had been raining for a few days. The sky was the color of a Vessel’s smoke-trail, with flashes of silver light behind.

That is what Jasper City is like at the end of summer. The upper reaches of Baxter’s Tower were clouded and gray. You could make out what I guessed were two or three Heavier-Than-Air Vessels roosting on the distant roof, and there were bars on the window and more guards than ever at the gate— the whole thing had a kind of militarized quality. Whitewater rivers formed between cracks in the streets and trash rode the rapids. There were few people about. When I stood up on the steps across the street from Baxter’s Tower I did not get the kind of crowd I would have hoped for, for what might be my last speech. Anyhow I said, “You know who I am— I guess you’re wondering why I’m here.” A little group of office-workers watched me. Their umbrellas made them look like glistening black mushrooms.

Adela stood beside me, and urged me in a whisper to keep quiet and say nothing foolish.

“If you don’t recognize me from the newspapers, my name is Harry Ransom, inventor of the Ransom Light-Bringing Process, et cetera et cetera. I’ve told you I will give my Process to Jasper City and that is not a lie.”

Somebody shouted, “The bomb!” I did not like that but I kept talking. “Now you’ll have heard that Mr. Baxter and I have our disagreements. That is no lie either. There are questions about ownership and money and patents— you know how they say it’s better not to learn how sausage is made— well, it’s better not to know how the future is made, either. Suffice it to say that Mr. Baxter and I may be about to come to an agreement.”

A few more umbrellas converged through the rain and joined my audience.

The guards at Baxter’s gate wore caps and raincoats. They watched me with interest. I shouted so that they could hear me over the rain. “Mr. Baxter is a reasonable man— I don’t care what you’ve heard about him. He is not a tyrant. You may have heard some people allege that Mr. Baxter is just a front-man for the forces of the Line, a traitor to the city that has made him great all these years, that he wants the Process for his masters— well, maybe— who knows?— not me. I have no evidence to prove that. He is a free and independent business-man—his
Autobiography
says so and why would he lie? All we want is the best
interest of the city and the future. That is why we are meeting today. If Mr. Baxter were in league with the enemies of this city, would he let me, the inventor of the Ransom— ah, Bomb— would he let me just come and go? Of course not. Anyhow I expect to return to you in one hour with news— you can wait for me— you can tell the newspapers if you like— one hour!”

I jumped down from the stairs and walked up to the gate, smiling at the guards.

“Well then,” I said. “It’s me. I know he’ll talk to me. And she’s coming too. Take us to him.”

Scowling, one of the guards reached out for my arm and I stepped back— and in the same instant a shot rang out behind me and a ragged hole appeared in the bronze-like metal of the gate, right where my head had been. I turned to look at the street behind but I could not tell who had fired— every single man and woman in the crowd looked just about equally sinister at that moment. The gate-guards ran to surround me and Adela while I was still reeling and numb and they took us inside in much the same way ants might carry a leaf.