Lightbringers and Rainmakers - Felix Gilman [5]
We shook on it.
Jess, this has been a great help to me, talking it out with you. I recall what I said precisely, and I do not think that I lied, though I may have misled or allowed Mr. Adams to mislead himself. He is desperate for money, by the way, and that is why he jumped at the chance of acquiring the Apparatus for parts. Disorder is in the grip of a Drought so bad it seems like the whole town might dry up and blow away into the west at any moment, and all the farms are failing and no one comes to market here, and all the fighting between Line and Gun is not helping business any either, and he needs to move on but no one will buy this big crumbling ruin of a Hotel from him. Of course in two weeks when I have nothing to give him then he will very likely consider me a fraud regardless. Almost but not quite casually he mentioned to me while I was eating that his wife is the Mayor and his brother-in-law is the Sheriff.
I do not know what I will do, but something will turn up, no doubt.
So Adams brought me something to eat. I told him I was a Vegetarian and that took some explaining, believe me. He asked where I had come from, and I said I had gotten turned around some but thought I had come here from the north, and he thought that couldn’t be right because I would have passed through Wild Folk territory, alone except for Carver, and would have known about it, if you know what I mean. Well I said the First Folk and I have never been at odds, and he looked at me very oddly in a way that gave me a chill.
Then since that was the mood at the table already I told him about what happened in Wherever. I thought I ought to warn him, I guess, that the War is coming to these parts. I could not tell him the actual name of the town or where it was exactly. He guessed for a while, throwing out names of places I’d never heard of. The fat woman did too. It was the first time she’d spoken, and her eyes lit up. She wanted to know all about the Motor Cars and the Heavier-Than-Air Vessels and whether they used the Ironclads, and I told her there weren’t any of the Ironclads, thanks for small mercies, and she asked whether they used the poison gas or the rockets or the wire or the noise-makers or any of the other horrible weapons they use. Some people get like that about the Line, I think because they have been afraid so long they end up a little in love with it, like some Religious people get about Death. She wanted to know what they were looking for: smugglers, she suggested, or refugees from the Republic or maybe even an Agent of the Gun. She said the Line had been hunting for someone or something in this part of the world ever since that incident at the Hospital, and I didn’t ask which Hospital or what incident because I just wanted to get away from her horrible hungry grin. I do not like thinking about these things. Also, just half an hour ago, while I was writing this letter or maybe the letter to Sue, at the writing desk in this little room under the mirror beside the window, a Vessel passed overhead. I heard it first then saw it out of the window, iron wings beating, bullying through the clouds and for a moment defacing the moon. They are hunting for someone, and one of the things about the Line is that even though you know it isn’t you and there is no reason for it to be you it still always feels like it is, like you have done something terribly wrong for which you must be punished, and will be punished forever. Anyway you know how I get in the dark, and I do not want to stop writing because then I shall have to put out the Light of this candle.
How are the kids? See, I remembered to ask.
H.
III. Founding Day
Dear Sue,
Two letters in two days! Surely a record. Don’t panic. All I have in the world is the clothes on my back and writing paper, because the rooms in the World’s Edge have writing paper, so I write. Like the Process, once begun it is Perpetual. I believe the writing paper was left there by the Smilers, for the purpose of making Confessions and Resolutions on. Instead I am writing to you.
I am still