I longed to talk to her about the Process, about words and language and names and the world. She only wanted to talk about politics and war. Not for the first time I wondered at what the Line had done to her to arouse such anger, and I wished I could have known her when she was young.

Anyhow in the end we came to an agreement. We would leave Jasper and go to Juniper City, on the other side of the Territory. Juniper had declared open defiance of the Line. We would offer that city our services, and the use of the Process. To h.e.l.l with Mr. Baxter and his libelous accusations. If the Line feared us let it have reason to fear- those were Adela's words, not mine. I agreed that it would be good to be on the road again. She kissed both my cheeks. I understand that to be a sign among the landowning cla.s.ses of the Deltas that an agreement of great significance has been reached.

Back in the days when I traveled with Mr. Carver out on the Rim, we would have left at once, before dawn, without a word or a look back. If we had done that who knows how things would have turned out! But I guess I was slowing down in my maturity. First, I said, I had business to resolve. She asked if I was talking about that fair & statuesque & blissfully unpolitical actress I have mentioned, except that she described her less kindly. I said that no, it was a family matter, although I would not deny that I would miss the fair & statuesque &c.

I pa.s.sed the day after that mending the damage the Apparatus had done to the Ormolu's bas.e.m.e.nt, until I was exhausted and hungry and filthy with the sweat of a hard day's work, and all in all I was in no fit state to do what I did next, which was to dress up as smart as I could in borrowed clothes and swallow my fear and strike out for the Floating World.

To get to the Floating World from Swing Street you had to walk north toward the river. On the Fenimore Bridge I was importuned by flower-sellers, match-sellers, beggars, recruiters, and prophets of the end times. A devotee of the World Serpent informed me that one day very soon that famous reptile would swallow itself up entirely, and us with it, and he ill.u.s.trated that proposition with a gesture that reminded me uncomfortably of the Ransom Process. I gave him a half-dollar.

The evening was hot and the sky was the color of the deep sea, with ink-blot clouds of black. If you stood on the edge of the bridge and looked north and waited for dark to fall you could see the Floating World. It stood on the cliff's edge atop the bluffs north of Jasper. It was a tall building of many rooms, sprawling like a millionaire's mansion, and at night it was lit by a thousand red lanterns that hung from its eaves or from the trees or from the arches in the rose-gardens. . . . Anyhow as the city below darkened the Floating World lit up and it shone through the trees.

My coat was made for an actor who was bigger and taller than me. I carried a gun beneath it. I do not know why. If the rumors were true, and the Floating World was a haven for the Agents of the Gun, and if they sniffed me out, it would do me no good.

When the city was fully dark and the stars were out and the Floating World was burning red like a coal I set off again.

North of the river the city climbs the foothills. The city thins out as the road gains alt.i.tude until there is just one path that winds up among rocks and the trees into the heights. At first that path is dark. Later there are lanterns. It is wide enough for the narrow sort of coaches, and you had better watch your back in case one comes thundering past. Some men walk up alone, like I did, and others go in drunken packs, laughing and joking and slapping each other on the back.

The Floating World is a thing of the past now- a long-gone monster, like the mammoth. That is why I mean to take the trouble to describe it. In those days it stood in the middle of lawns, rose-gardens, white marble statues and other such luxuries. There were men in the garden and arm in arm with or sitting beside them on the benches there were women, most of them in scarlet and black, in all kinds of states of undress. I followed a twisting path, glancing from side to side. I met the cold and indifferent gaze of a woman who stared right through me like I was a ghost, while a silver-haired gentleman s...o...b..red at her throat. Three women curtsied in the elaborate old-fashioned style for the entertainment of a Reverend of the Smiler brethren, whose grin was not of the spiritual kind. And so on and so on.

Now I have traveled all over the Rim in wild and lonely places and I do not claim to be an innocent, but I did not like the Floating World. It was as if I saw my sister's face in the face of every woman there, and I did not like it at all. I have done things I am not proud of to get by and I do not judge what anyone does to make a living, but nonetheless I did not like it.

The path led me to two big doors with gla.s.s windows spilling light. Soon as I stepped through them it felt like I was washed away in a swell of music and perfume and alcohol and cigar-smoke and laughter both false and real, but mostly false, and then I was standing by a counter of some lacquered and intaglio'd red wood and a woman with a smile as wide as the World Serpent's must be was wishing me a wonderful evening, and inquiring as to my desires. She had a tattoo of a serpent all up one arm and around her wrist, and she was toying with the corner of a page of a ledger of some kind. My desires were mostly not the sort she could service, being more along the lines of striking one of those gentlemen of Jasper in the face or running away at once or both. I held my hat to my chest and stammered like a hayseed.

"Well, ma'am, I don't know, I don't rightly know, I am new in town, it's all just about more than a body can . . . I mean I don't know, miss. I feel overcome. Back in Hamlin we never had any such . . . or I mean to say . . . Well maybe I should sit down . . . may I?"

I sat heavily on a bench and began to dab at my forehead with a handkerchief. Another guest took my place in the woman's attention.

I sat with my hat in my lap and I watched the crowd.

It was an immense room, with paintings and green plants and fireplaces on every wall and shadowed corners. I shall not say who I saw in it because I do not always know who survived Jasper's fall and who did not, and maybe those who did not survive had wives or children who did. Suffice it to say that many of the great and the good of Jasper attended the Floating World. It was what the sophisticated people of the big cities call an open secret, I guess. I did not see Mr. Baxter but I saw men who I believed from what I overheard of their conversation were notable in just about every other business or faith or union in town. That is not to say that I did not also see hayseeds and rubes and prospectors with filthy hands and their hair slicked back attempting to ape what they imagined were the manners of city gentlemen. Desire is a great leveler. I saw no fewer than half a dozen Senators, or I think I did, because like I have said all Senators look much the same to me. Three of them were laughing together over some joke, which the women they'd bought pretended to find funny. A fourth came and joined them and said something and suddenly none of them were laughing.

A very tall and very beautiful red-haired woman walked across the room and the crowd parted for her. She met with a man in a fine white suit and they spoke together for a while, arm in arm. It looked like a very important conversation, and I was sorry I could not hear what they were saying.

Half an hour had pa.s.sed while I watched. No Agent of the Gun appeared behind me, weapon pressed to my back, all evil grin and twirling mustache and sulfurous breath whispering in my ear There you are at last Professor Ransom. . . . I got emboldened. I bought a drink for a young lady.

"I mean no offense," I said to her. "No one could say you're not pretty. But I'm kind of homesick, you see. Where I'm from everyone has skin kind of like mine- it's a little place out West, you won't know it- and I'm looking for a girl of a similar complexion. The heart wants what it wants, you know? Is there-?"

That kind young lady pointed me to another young lady who pointed me to a third, who I approached through the crowds and heat and smoke of the room. It was only when I got close to her that I realized she was not a flesh-and-blood person, but a remarkably lifelike part of a painting on the wall. I am not sure whether I had been pointed toward her as a joke or whether I had got turned around. I stood by the wall for a while and studied the painting. It was a mural, depicting a scene in the garden of an old-world prince's palace, and as a man of the theater I took a professional interest in the tricks of perspective it played.

There was a scream from the other side of that wall. Neither the music nor the laughter stopped for it. Still emboldened, I investigated. I explored along the wall until I found a door, in the midst of a painted grove of ivy and shadows. I breathed deeply, touched the gun beneath my coat for luck, and opened it.

The door opened onto a very long corridor, with many doors on either side. It was lit by two red lanterns at its mid-point and beyond was a hazy red darkness. Out of that darkness a figure came forward.

Well I shall not play games. It was my sister Jess. She was a little thinner than when I last saw her and her hair had been cut short, and I guess all I could say about her outfit was that she has always been her own woman and it is no business of mine to judge. I was so overjoyed to see her that a tear came to my eye.

Speaking of eyes- hers widened. At the same time her mouth drew tight and thin. She made a gesture that when we were young and always sneaking into things meant get out. I guess you could figure out what it meant too, if you saw it. It was forceful.

There was that scream again, from behind one of the many doors.

Another figure came up behind my sister. It was that tall and beautiful red-haired woman, for whom all the crowd had parted. It made me dizzy to see her, because only moments before I'd seen her, or I'd thought I'd seen her, back in the room behind me, talking to Senators and Reverends and businessmen. She put a hand on my sister's shoulder. My sister was still miming go but now only with her eyes. I did not. I was frozen. It was not until the moment I saw her that I recalled John Creedmoor speaking of his onetime colleague Scarlet Jen of the Floating World. I tried to push the thought from my mind. I felt like that woman could read what I was thinking the way Amaryllis pretended to and for all I know she could.

Behind me there was the sound of a gunshot, then cheering and laughter. Somebody stumbled backwards into me. I shoved him aside.

I swear I did not see either of them move but the next thing I knew the red-haired woman was on the far side of the big room, directing her guards to seize and question the unlucky gunman, and my sister was gone.

The gunman, as it turned out, was drunk and had pulled out his weapon and shot at the ceiling not out of malice, but by way of celebrating a piece of very good news that had just been whispered to him. Now that good news was leaping from ear to ear all across the room and back again, and although I was more concerned with what the h.e.l.l had happened to my sister it found its way to me soon enough. Like they said in the newspaper the next day: THE BATTLE OF JUNIPER CITY.

Events in our one-time peaceful sister city of Juniper are on the march too quickly for your humble correspondent to keep pace. Last I wrote Governor-Elect Voll had declared independence from the Three Cities. Two days ago Governor-Elect Voll declared Juniper's support for the reborn Red Valley Republic, that ill-fated empire of the western territories, that we had all thought long-gone. Reports from the High House are that Voll is now dead, murdered mid-speech by an uncaught a.s.sa.s.sin. Yesterday the forces of the Line came to Juniper, with Heavier-Than-Air Vessels and Ironclads and marching men. Today those forces have been beaten back, all the way to the banks of the River Ire, where it is said that the Angelus Engine itself was destroyed. How was this impossible feat accomplished? Lieutenant-Governor Bloom denies that the city's armies were a.s.sisted by that Adversary of the Line, but also of all Decent People, which I shall not name here. Instead he says that the notorious Doctor Eliza Alferhussen and the one-time Agent John Creedmoor have entrusted their mysterious "weapon" to Juniper. Rumors fly thick and fast. Your own humble correspondent his own self has been pressed into the Second Juniper Irregulars, and writes from a tent on the banks of the Ire.

I guess by the time the news was out and had filled the whole room all the best business-deals were already made, and all that was left was for the yahoos and b.u.mpkins who were last to hear it to celebrate or panic as they saw fit. There was only one gunshot but a whole lot of hooting and hollering and fists slammed on tables and gla.s.ses thrown and women treated roughly. I could not see my sister in all the chaos. The red-haired woman was surrounded by several Senators who all wanted her ear, and she seemed to have forgotten about me. The flames in all the room's many fireplaces leapt higher and higher, cracking and snapping and charring the edges of rugs and couches and scarlet dresses and the feathers some of the women wore in their hair, not to mention their hair. I cannot say if the flames were celebrating or panicking or both. I fled, out through the back doors and through the rose-garden and down into the city below.

I ran all the way to Adela's apartment. I was eager to tell her the news about Juniper. I changed my mind a dozen times on the way down, sometimes thinking I would say that we should flee at once, sometimes thinking I could enlist her in a scheme to save my sister- I entertained a number of wild schemes involving disguises, tunnels, rope-ladders, hot-air balloons, and I don't recall what else. I do not know what I had decided or if I had decided anything as I knocked on her door. Anyhow I regret to say that she did not answer.

I started to worry.

I went back to the Ormolu. It was late and dark and even Swing Street was empty. I was afraid with every step that Scarlet Jen of the Floating World would swoop down on me, red dress billowing like wings- well, it had been a long night and I have a fanciful kind of imagination, as I guess you know by now. I held on to my gun under my coat. I entered the Ormolu and fell into bed. I was too tired to undress but could not sleep in my own attic room because of the light of the moon and the bigness of the sky and the occasional sounds of shouting from the street, so I went down into the bas.e.m.e.nt and lay on my back on the warm earth where the Apparatus had been. That was where I was when Mr. Baxter's detectives caught up with me.

CHAPTER 22.

THE DETECTIVES.

"Harry Ransom?"

"Professor Ransom, if that's what you call yourself."

"Is this it? This junk? Is this it? Is it? Answer, d.a.m.n you. Wake up.

On your feet."

"Don't move. Stay on the floor. Don't you dare move."

"What? Who are you? Who are you people? All right- I'm not moving- I said I'm not moving."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds- how dare you."

"Listen, Ransom. We know who you are. You've led us all on a h.e.l.l of a chase and fair play to you. Don't make trouble now."

"I'm not- leave that alone."

"This is the so-called Ransom Apparatus? Well then this is the property of the Northern Lighting Corporation and the Baxter Trust and Mr. Baxter his own self, Mr. Ransom, and as their deputized agent I'll touch it if I please."

"How dare you, you --."

"That is the property of the Ormolu Theater, sir, and- listen, Hal, what is this, what do these people mean, Ransom?"

"Listen, Mr. Quantrill, I guess you don't have much reason now to trust me, but my advice to you is not to ask questions and to get out of here while you can."

"You stay where you are, Quantrill- is that your name? Quantrill. All right. Stay where you are. And will somebody gag that f.u.c.king woman? Hite, Copper, what's the problem, she's hardly five feet tall."

"She bit me, boss. She's real mad."

"Leave her alone."

"What's her name? Who is she? Quantrill- give a name."

"Adela Iermo something Kotan something else, I don't know. That's what she said. I don't know. I don't know what this is all about. Take 'em both."

"Don't tell me my business, Quantrill."

"Have your men pack up everything in this room, Detective Gates. Carefully."

"Right under our noses. Right in Jasper. All this time."

"Hal, is this about what happened the other night- that light- what is it?"

"Shut your mouth, Quantrill."

"I have my rights. I'll sue- your boss doesn't scare me."

"Shut your mouth, Ransom."

"Get up."

"Stay where you are."

"Mmmpphh. Mmmm-mmm. Mrrrgg."

"Harry Ransom, sometimes Professor Harry Ransom, my name is Charles Elias Shelby, attorney at law. My colleagues here are detectives in the employ of the Baxter Detective Agency. I represent the Northern Lighting Corporation and the Baxter Trust and Mr. Baxter personally."

"I know what you represent, Shelby. Your boss works for the-"

"I'd advise you to avoid further slander, Mr. Ransom. Now this here is an order of the high court of Jasper City, Mr. Ransom, enjoining you from further infringements on the property and licenses and good name of Mr. Baxter and the NLC. You may consider this service of process."

"Careful of him, Mr. Shelby."

"This is all a lie- the Process is mine, n.o.body else's, your boss and his bosses may think they own the whole world but they don't."

"Mmph. Mmph."

"The law is the law, Mr. Ransom. The voice of authority has spoken and the game is over."

"Careful, Mr. Shelby."

"All of this is over, Mr. Ransom. That is the meaning of the word injunction, which you will see here, and again here, on this order. Only a word, all of it only words, but words of great power. I think you understand about words, Mr. Ransom. Why, what else is there? Now in this instance the power of this word is the power to set the world back on its proper course, to put an end to these shenanigans and j.a.pes and nonsense and to say who's who and what's what and who owns what. This is a word that commands you to be silent. To be still. We are going to seize your device, Mr. Ransom, and what's more you shall never be permitted to build it again, or anything else, no matter where you go. The law is the law the world over, Mr. Ransom. Furthermore-"

"Now, Mr. Shelby, just hand him the paper and don't-"

"Hey-what's that- under his coat?"

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d's got a gun, d.a.m.n it!"

"Get him."

"Wait-I wasn't-"

"Get it!"

"Ugh. Ow."

"Mmmphh!"

"Got it- got it."

"What were you planning with this? Eh? Ransom? What are you doing in Jasper City anyway?"

"Conspiracy to murder I'd call this, what do you say Mr. Shelby?"

"Why, that may very well be, Detective."

"I didn't know. I swear on my mother's grave I didn't know."

"Listen, Quantrill- you shut your mouth and you keep it shut, understand? This man is a thief and a fraud, who stole from Mr. Baxter, and n.o.body wants it to get out what kind of people work here, do they?"

"No sir. No sir. My lips are sealed. He was never here, as far as I'm concerned."

"You coward, Quantrill- you still owe me money."

"The Injunction commands your silence, Mr. Ransom. Don't make me ask the detectives to enforce it."

"That's lawyer-speak for shut your d.a.m.n mouth, Ransom. Now stand up."

"Please, Detectives, don't damage him. Now. Now listen. My employer wants to talk to you, Mr. Ransom. Frankly I have advised him against this course of action but he says he likes to look a man in the eye when he deals with him."

"Mr. Baxter wants to talk to me?"

"Who else? Will you come peacefully, Mr. Ransom?"