The saloon's owner leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the table and hooked his thumbs in a self-satisfied way into his lapels and said, "I'm surprised you haven't heard, Professor. Seeing as you said you knew all about New Dreyfus and what a fine little town it is and how you came here especially to visit us. We have all the electric-light we could ever need, and N.D. does not go dark at night."

My heart sank but I kept smiling.

The saloon owner winked, and got up from the table, and beckoned me to follow him upstairs. He told his lieutenants at the table we would be but a moment, and I agreed, and told them we would talk further when I returned. He led me up and out onto the balcony, where he shooed away the pretty girls and said, "See?"

I saw. While I had been idling in the saloon and drifting from table to table and talking about myself, evening had fallen. A switch had been thrown- I don't mean that as a figure of speech. It now became apparent that all along Lead Street arc lights squatted on the rooftops. In the bustle of the afternoon I had not noticed them. They cast a cold white light that to my eye was hideous.

"The Northern Lighting Corporation fixed us up six months ago," he said. "N.D. does not sleep." There was indeed something manic and sleepless-looking and herky-jerky about the people below, caught in that light.

"I know of the Northern Lighting Corporation," I said. "I know of their work. They are as crooked as the world is wide. They will bleed you, they will ruin you. What did they charge? They say they operate out of the Three Cities but you know what, that is a lie, they are a front for the Line, and that means all that comes with the Line. But what I offer you, sir, is entirely different. For one thing-"

He looked out over the white night of Dreyfus and shrugged. "I don't know much about politics, Professor. But I know what works."

He left me alone out there. I spied Mr. Carver down in the street below, leaning on a fencepost, rolling a cigarette. Our eyes met and we both shrugged.

The same thing happened in Thatcher and Ford. In Thatcher my allegations against the Northern Lighting Corporation were overheard, and three men followed me outside. It was not that late in the day but it was late in the year when we got to Thatcher, and so when the arc light over the saloon sparked suddenly and went out we were in darkness. One fellow s.n.a.t.c.hed the hat from my hand and a second shoved me into the third, who grabbed my arm and told me that if I kept spreading rumors I would regret it. I answered less diplomatically than I should have, maybe, and there was a scuffle and my nose was bloodied and I was knocked to my knees and to tell the truth I was already starting to regret it.

My a.s.sailants dispersed when the light came back on. A few minutes later Old Man Harper walked by, on his way into the saloon, and saw me wiping mud from my hat.

"I have more enemies than I deserve," I said. "I am fighting a losing battle, me against the world. The next century is at stake. Time is running out and my optimism is sorely strained."

"Yeah?" he said. "I was young once too." He pushed past me and entered the saloon.

III. Politics and Religion

I tried not to talk politics or religion with anyone. That is the golden rule when traveling in strange country, doing business with strangers, or visiting with relatives. Little Water was a Line town and Mansel was a Gun town and Slate was divided down the middle and the mere act of eating breakfast in one establishment or another had consequences and implications I could not fathom. There were encampments of the Line all along Gold River and in the shadow of the Opals, and their Heavier-Than-Air Vessels were frequently seen overhead, watching like hawks. In Stone Hill and Dalton and Honnoth there were heaving tents hosting religious revivals of the Smiler, Silver City, and World Serpent faiths, respectively. South of Dalton we must have pa.s.sed too close to a settlement of the Folk, or in some other way broken one of their laws, because somebody pelted us with stones from up on the rocky hillside until we moved on as fast as the horses could trot.

In Mattie's Town we dined at a hotel whose owners were die-hard old men who had once been soldiers of the Red Republic, you could tell from the relics of that splendid and ill-fated Cause that decorated the walls, torn battle-standards and battered medals and the like, and I did not know where to look or what gestures of respect to make to avoid offense. In Kukri there was a bank that had been robbed seven times by the same Agent of the Gun, the notorious and dashing Gentleman Jim Dark. He robbed it every time he came through on other business, the way a traveling salesman might stop in to visit a woman, and after a while he started posing for photographs, and now Kukri did better business in memorabilia than it had ever done in banking. They kept talking about Jim Dark this and Jim Dark that, and Old Man Harper got unaccountably frightened and made us move on.

In Ruhr and in Tull and in Carnap people spoke with mixed feelings of rumors that nearby free settlements of the Folk had been slaughtered. Eye-witness accounts were not dissimilar to what Carver and I had seen outside Kenauk. n.o.body could say who was responsible- but in Carnap I heard that a huge man wearing a foul bearskin over a big gray soldier's coat and filthy breeches had wandered into town. He had a s.h.a.ggy wild-man's beard and he had more than a dozen long Folk finger-bones and hanks of dry black mane braided into his belt. He had a rifle of incongruous quality slung across his back, and a gun like that on a man like that could mean only thing. He was nearer to nine feet tall than eight. The two hunting dogs that stretched out at his feet were indistinguishable from wolves. He sat at a lunch counter and consumed enough sausage and coffee for six men or as many as twenty, depending on who was telling the story, then left without paying or ever speaking a single word except "Knoll," which might or might not have been his name.

This story frightened Old Man Harper terribly. It frightened me too, though I was not sure why. I did not like the Agents of the Gun but I had no quarrel with them so far as I knew.

I have said the names of the Gun and the Line a lot. Maybe in the new century you will have forgotten what they are. Well- I am an optimist. Ransom City will be free of them if I have any say in the matter. We will build out in the unmade lands where things are not yet made in their image.

I could tell you what I know about the Engines of the Line and their cold greed and the legions of men and machines that serve them. I don't know much but I know more than most men. I could tell you a few things about the Gun. They do not have the numbers the Line has but their chosen few, the Agents, are more than human- like Blood-and-Thunder Boch and Jim Dark and Dandy Fanshawe and all those other colorful ladies and gentlemen of the ballads and the legends and the crime reports. I have met more than one of them in my time, in White Rock and in Jasper, and most of what you hear about them is true. They are strong as bears and faster than snakes and they are not impossible to kill but it is d.a.m.n hard.

When I was a boy it was always said that the Engines themselves and the demons of the Gun were immortal. They might in the course of their fighting smash each other's bodies of wood and metal but their spirits would always return, after a suitable vacation from history, after maybe one or two human generations had gone by, like a feud reigniting or a touch of madness in the family tree. Nothing could kill them. If that was true the War would be without end. It was best not to think about that for too long.

Anyhow when we got to Garland the Linesmen were going house to house kicking in doors and shouting questions and when they were done with a house they wrapped it in black tape and barbed wire and afterwards n.o.body would look at that house, like it had just vanished. They questioned us and we did the old servant & master routine again and did not stay the night.

When we got to New Boylan Town it was already gone, the buildings leveled by Line rockets and the population evacuated to n.o.body-knew-where, because there had been Agents of the Gun hiding there, or so they said. And in Sandalwood, which was close enough to New Boylan that they could see the smoke, a man came up to me as I was preparing the Apparatus and said, "I know who you are."

I said, "I should hope so. I put up posters all over town." He was nervous and thin and did not smile or take my hand when I offered it, only pushed his spectacles up on his nose then fiddled with his tie.

"My brother-in-law saw you in Kenauk and he wrote to me."

"It could take me a moment to recall Kenauk. Would you hand me that hammer?"

"Me, I'm from Boylan. I used to be from Boylan. I had a store there."

"I'm sorry. I am sorry, I really am. So. Ah. Well then. What did your brother think of the show?"

"Brother-in-law."

"Sorry."

"He said you said you had a machine that could end the War. We wouldn't have to. . . . He said you could. That it was a secret, that it was some secret weapon you learned from the Folk. That if you . . . I mean . . . the Powers, the you-know-what and the you-know-who, that you'd found a way to, you know."

"No," I said.

He took off his spectacles and stared at his feet. I was nervous that he would attack me or start crying, and I did not know which would be worse. Fortunately Miss Harper had been watching this exchange as she polished the Apparatus, and now she came around the side of it and put her hand on the man's arm and asked what his store had sold, and after a while he started talking about that instead, much to my relief. When people asked me about my politics I usually said I was a Free-Marketer, or that I thought the little guy ought to get a fair shot, or if I thought those might cause offense I would just say that I was a believer in Light.

IV. Elizabeth Harper

She was tall, and fair, and blue-eyed. She wore her hair long, tied in a tail. She might once have been pretty but after all the hard and weathering travel she'd done you would have to call her handsome. She did not mind the cold but was short of breath when it was hot. There were times when we ate well and times when we ate badly but she was always thin, in a way that concealed a quite respectable strength and hardness. Her one luxury was expensive tooth-powder. If she ever complained about anything she was too proud to do it in my presence.

The stories she told me about herself were never true, and after a while stopped being even consistent. It was like a game between us. When we had company she was my servant, and very quiet. At other times she was variously a refugee, a botanist, an heiress fleeing an unwelcome marriage, a reporter on a.s.signment for the Gibson City Gazette, a missionary come to minister to the wild Folk, an undercover surveyor for the Jasper City Bank, the wife of a famous outlaw in hiding, and the granddaughter of the late General Orlan Enver of the late Red Valley Republic, in hiding from enemies of the Cause. I think she enjoyed being other people. It was a kind of liberation for her. You could tell that she labored under some great responsibility.

She could never quite hide her accent. I guessed that she was from the Ancient East, far away and across the mountains, from one of the cold green northern princ.i.p.alities, like Koenigswald or Maessen or Kees or the like. The way I was raised, that made her almost as fantastic and unlikely as an elf or a troll, and if she'd ever just said she was a princess I might have believed her. I guessed also that she was a scientist, not from anything in particular she said but from the way she said things, and from all the foolish sort of things that most people say all the time but she never did.

She hardly ever spoke a word to Carver except for time-of-the-day pleasantries, and it may be that Carver never said a single word to her. She communicated with Old Man Harper in significant glances and nods. She did not ride well. On the other hand she was cool under pressure whenever we were questioned at checkpoints, which was not infrequent. When I put on shows she took round the hat for donations and subscriptions, and it turned out that she had a talent for it, especially with women.

She took a considerable interest in the Ransom Process, and asked me about it often. I said I would not tell her how it worked until she told me who she was, and that was that. She also at my urging experimented with the Ransom Vegetarian Diet and my system of morning Exercises, the Ransom System of Exercises.

She would stare at the Apparatus with a half-smile as if it was a joke she did not get, and sometimes woke early in the morning and slid down on her back in the dirt to inspect its underbelly. She was appalled to discover that I had no regular system of note-taking regarding its functions. There were times when it ran smoothly for hours and there were times when it did nothing at all and I said that as far as I was concerned it was a matter of art, like understanding the moods of a high-spirited horse. She stared at me and I had the sense that I was back at school again, and being examined, and not doing well. After that she took on the task of recording observations herself. I think like me she liked problems that she could solve. Carver seemed to resent this intrusion but said nothing.

Soon she reported steady progress, despite occasional setbacks.

"I knew it in my heart," I said, "But it does me a world of good to hear it from another person."

"Well," she said, "just wait until you get to Jasper City."

Whenever we came to a crossroads she urged me eastward, toward Jasper City. I still had doubts and misgivings but she told me I was ready to face Mr. Alfred Baxter and roll the dice on my fortune, that it was only fear that held me back. I said maybe another year, and she pointed out that in another year the Northern Lighting Corporation would have beaten me utterly- would have sewn up every town in the West- it was now or never. I knew that she had her own purposes for going east, but I liked hearing it anyhow.

I don't want to be ungallant and the fact is that Miss Harper was most likely not so much older than myself, but in a way she reminded me of what I imagined my mother might have been like had she not died when I was small. I do not mean that she cooked or cleaned or mended for me, because except when it was strictly necessary to maintain our servant & master subterfuge she did not. I think I mean that when I was a boy and my mother came to me in dreams she always seemed to be carrying some secret from the next world, I never knew whether it was wonderful or terrifying, but either way she could not tell me, there were no words. That is what Elizabeth Harper was like. I wanted to impress her. I boasted even more than usual. Her secrets and everything I didn't yet understand about the Process and her urgency and mine began to get all bound up together in my mind. I would I lay half-awake at night sometimes imagining how one problem might be the answer to the other, looking up at the stars and listening to Old Man Harper p.i.s.sing against a tree and muttering, or whittling ugly pointless nothings out of wood as he kept lookout. One time I felt I was on the threshold of understanding when Old Man Harper woke us all up, shooting into the woods at nothing. Only Mr. Carver slept through it. He could sleep through anything.

V. The Ransom System of Exercises

If I am to be remembered at all, it will be for the Process, or the founding of Ransom City, and the System of Exercises will be no more than a footnote. But I am justly proud of it.

Like the Ransom Process itself, the Ransom System of Exercises works mostly by the creation and counter-position of forces. Also like the Process, it may be performed anywhere, without wires or other equipment.

First you stand very straight, like a child trying to steal something from a high shelf. Then you bend, like you are suddenly fascinated by the dirt on the floor. You can do this in a rustic barn, by moonlight under a lonely tree on the western plains, in a Line prison cell, in the privacy of your childhood sickroom, in a narrow attic lodging in Jasper City. You can do it in the presence of strangers if you have a thick enough skin. You can try pa.s.sing it off as a religious observance- that will not eliminate all jeering but may reduce it. Anyhow the motion is to be repeated, the number of repet.i.tions to be increased daily. This loosens the muscles and the tendons, which otherwise become set in their ways. Then you seize one foot in each hand so that you form a full circle- by now you should be on your back- this is d.a.m.ned hard to put into words!- and now first on one side of your body, then the other, you may set the muscles of your own body against each other. Stand, clasp your hands as if about to wrestle an invisible man to the floor- the angle is important- set one arm against the other with all your might, and more. Repeat and repeat again. Thus you can build strength out of nothing. You would not think it to look at me but I can balance on my own head, and I almost never tire, and I can lift my chin to a tavern's doorframe often enough to win wagers.

I have done these Exercises almost daily- with frequent refinements of the System and with occasional exceptions for emergencies or injury- ever since I was fourteen years old. When I was a boy I tried to sell lessons regarding the System to the miners of East Conlan to finance my greater work, but they regarded the practice with ill-founded suspicion and contempt. Mr. Carver refused to partic.i.p.ate too. In the town of Heinberg I was accused of witchcraft on account of the Exercises- they thought it was a Folk-dance to scare up curses. Miss Harper experimented, like I said. Old Man Harper sneered whenever he witnessed me performing the Exercises but once I caught him attempting them himself, puffing, red in the face and furious. It was the day after we heard about the giant Knoll, with the wolves and the bearskin and the big rifle &c, and I think he was still in a panic. Anyhow he was doing it all wrong. I said nothing.

VI. Mariette and Golda

Mariette was a horse. I do not know very much about her parentage and she kept her political opinions to herself. Golda was also a horse, and she had a certain dignified stubbornness that makes me think she would have fallen in with Trade Unionists had I ever shown her the big city. Mariette was brown and I purchased her in Melville City from a man with crooked teeth. Golda was black and white and I purchased her on a farm south of Disorder after a previous horse got shot. They were both pretty good animals. Neither survived White Rock. So far as I know they were just horses and kept no particular secrets. Though who knows what's important to a horse?

VII. Old Man Harper

I don't like to speak ill of anyone but Old Man Harper was a mean son of a b.i.t.c.h.

He was of medium height, and solidly built, with the kind of shoulders that could still throw a punch if need be. He wore a long dirt-brown duster and beneath that there was a gray shirt, a curl of gray chest hair, and a thick neck with one or two white scars. He had the kind of face that is either pale or blotchy red or sometimes both at once, and a slightly skewed nose. His hair was still thick and he oiled it. Sometimes he walked with a stick, sometimes not. Often one sensed he was exaggerating his infirmity and the ugliness of his limp, either to mislead his enemies or out of pure bitterness. I always felt that I had seen him before, but I wasn't sure where.

You could tell he'd been handsome when he was younger. That was not enough to explain his huge bitterness. He was like a man who has given up too much and thought he was owed the world in return, and got nothing. I wondered at first if he had failed in business, but once I got to know him I could not imagine him ever doing honest work.

Mr. Carver did not like Old Man Harper, and Old Man Harper did not like Mr. Carver. Most days Old Man Harper had no good word to say about anyone. He could make the word Professor sound like the vilest insult imaginable. Then again there were rare days when he was the soul of good cheer, he would encourage me to smoke with him and would walk beside me and tell jokes and stories about things that happened in battles before I was born, and he was so charming one could forget all the slights and the threats of the day before. I did not know what caused these changes of mood, and I suspect neither did he.

He purchased every newspaper he ever set eyes on and scanned first the reports of crimes, then the reports of miracles, then the reports of business, and lastly as if he'd been building his strength for it he read the latest dispatches from the War. He had strong opinions on most political issues- generally that everyone involved was a thief or a d.a.m.n fool- with the exception of questions pertaining to War between the Gun and the Line, about which he would only shake his head and say that things were very complicated. He was sometimes generous to children, more often menacing. He could stare down men twice his size and half his age and a hundred times drunker than he was. I saw it happen. He spoke to dogs as if he expected obedience, which he sometimes got and sometimes didn't. He stole, thoughtlessly and often. He was never without a gun on his person, often concealed. He was a keen and deadly hunter.

He was always on the lookout. He rarely slept. Like I said he sometimes fired blindly into the woods at night, spooked by an owl or a rodent or a wind in the trees or the moon or who-knows-what. He read menace in the tracks of animals and whenever he was in town he fancied people were watching him and taking notes. Signs of the Folk fascinated him and sometimes when he thought they were nearby he would set off into the woods or up among the rocks and just stand there impatiently, as if waiting for someone to answer his grievances. Nothing ever happened and he would come back furious and scowling. Sometimes he would vanish for a day or two at a time, as if he had decided to go his own way- but he always found us again, or more precisely he found Miss Harper- I was surplus to requirements.

Once I asked him, "So what brings you back?" I meant this as a pleasantry and did not expect an answer, but it seemed he was in a thoughtful mood.

He shook his head and said, "Someone must keep me on the straight and narrow. I'm too weak to do what must be done. I'm not a good man, Ransom. Without that d.a.m.n woman's nagging . . ."

"What must be done, exactly?"

"Mind your own business, Professor."

You may recall the story I recounted earlier, regarding the nine-foot giant in the bearskin coat who came into Carnap with trophies of the Folk on his belt and two wolf-like dogs at his feet and who did not pay for his breakfast. This story scared Old Man Harper like I have never seen a grown man scared by anything. He developed an interest in soothsaying, he purchased charms and icons in every town where such things were for sale, he trapped rabbits and consulted their entrails as to the movements of his enemies. I asked what enemies and he said that the great hidden secret of the universe was that the whole thing and everyone in it is your enemy. "You can write that maxim down, Professor, and call it yours if you like." He was told by a patently mad palm-reader in Mansel Town that he should avoid river-voyages and mirrors and for the rest of our time together he dipped the brim of his hat to cover his eyes whenever he pa.s.sed a mirror. As the condition worsened he started to do the same for windows, bodies of still water, even men with spectacles.

If he saw the smoke of a Line vehicle ahead he might make us go miles out of our way. Once he heard two little boys speculating excitedly about rumors that a real live Agent of the Gun had been seen in the vicinty, and he made us leave town at once. A woman who said she was a witch sold him a dried dog's p.e.n.i.s on a piece of string, that was supposed to ward off the eyes of the Powers. So far as I know it did not.

He had no interest whatsoever in the Apparatus. He was like a wild animal. What ever he could neither use nor master frightened him. Whenever I mentioned Mr.Alfred Baxter, he scoffed.

"I could have been a businessman," he said. "Had I chosen to. I was full of big ideas when I was a boy."

"Is that a fact. For instance?"

He gave the question a moment's thought then shrugged. "Buy low and sell high, Professor. It's a simple enough con."

I didn't ask him a whole lot of questions. I tried to puzzle him out by tracking and observation and studying his signs.

I was still sure that I had seen him before. Eventually, and quite by chance, I found out where.

We'd stopped in Durham Town. It was the beginning of winter and the wind was wet and cold and we'd paid to sit by the fireplace in a beer hall and un-freeze our joints and wring chunks of ice from our hair. There were old newspapers by the fire and a shelf of even older books, which the proprietors loaned out for a penny. Mostly they were s.m.u.t. A few concerned notorious crimes. There was a single ancient copy of the Charter of the Red Republic standing stiff-backed on the shelf like a missionary among wh.o.r.es. Miss Harper found the Charter interesting. Old Man Harper read the newspapers. I got talking to a boy who worked in the beer hall about books and I suggested that an ambitious boy might want to read the Autobiography of Mr. Alfred Baxter, or a good Encyclopedia of the natural sciences. And he said that was all very well but he had grander ambitions, and he pointed me to his favorite among his employer's books. It was called The Captains of Crime: Their Glorious Lives and Their Ignominious Ends.

It was printed on stiff yellow paper and it recounted the escapades of a dozen Agents of the Gun in tones of both righteous condemnation and ghoulish glee. I read about Dagger Dolly, who once burned a whole town to the ground because a man had insulted her. I read about Blood-and-Thunder Boch, whose legend and whose burden it was that he could never say no to a dare, and who consequently stood athwart an onrushing Engine and shot out its headlamp and was killed. I read about elegant Dandy Fanshawe of whom it was said that no dope was dealt in the West without his taking a cut, and Procopio "Dynamite" Morse, Abban the Lion who dueled a hundred men and could talk to snakes, and then I turned the page and read about John Creedmoor, the charming monster who stole away the heir to the Tyrias Transport Trust, who led the Gibson City Mob for five years, who sabotaged the Line's factories at the Devil's Spine, who . . .

I did not read most of the words. I just stared at the photograph that was reproduced beneath them.

The book speculated that the man was dead. He had done nothing wicked or grand for years, and surely that meant he was dead. A man of John Creedmoor's proud restless spirit would not think of retiring, and besides his masters would not allow it. The only way out of the service of the Guns was by means of a noose or a bullet.

I lowered the book to see that Old Man Harper was watching me. Our eyes met but we said nothing.

I was terrified and did not know what to say. I grew up in a town on the edges of Line territory. We were not important or glamorous and we had nothing much to steal and nothing much worth sabotaging. Except for in books and songs I had never met an Agent of the Gun. Not at that time in my life. But I had seen what they left behind at Toro and I had seen one hanged at Secchi. I had been present at a town called Kloan when there was a shoot-out between an Agent and forces of the Line, hiding behind a barrel- I have nightmares about it still.

Anyhow that night he came into my room. I was not sleeping but did not notice him standing by my bed until a cloud moved from the moon and revealed his silhouette. He stretched out his stick and pressed it against my chin as if to close my mouth. It hurt. The back of my skull was pressed against the headboard, so that my head was in a kind of clamp, like I was about to be the subject of dentistry.

"My fame has found me out," he said.

I could not easily open my mouth to answer, so I did not try.

We stayed like that for some time. I was afraid, and then angry, and then afraid and angry at the same time, and then I started to feel ashamed, as if I had wronged him by snooping into his past. It seemed some of the menace faded from his eyes and he just looked tired.