Creedmoor stepped back from the wheel.

"I was an Agent of the Gun," he said. "I have done terrible things. They sent me out here last year to bring back that weapon. To destroy it, maybe, or use it themselves. They never told me the truth about anything if they could help it so I don't know. The- Miss Harper was an innocent who had the misfortune of crossing my path. One thing led to another and I turned on my masters and set their business aside."

He said that last thing like it was not so difficult to do for a man of his quality, like he wanted me to be impressed by his daring, which despite myself I was.

"My name is Liv," Miss Harper said. "I was a doctor in another life."

She approached the horses, speaking softly to calm them. "Huh. What kind of doctor?"

"A psychologist. That means I studied madness and delusion."

"I know what that means. I am an educated man."

I shoved the pistol into my belt and went to help with the wheel. "So what is this weapon?"

"I don't know," Creedmoor said.

"I like to call it a cure," said Miss Harper- Liv. She put a gentle hand on Mariette's flank. "The Guns and the Engines are a kind of madness, in my opinion. I don't know how it works. It's something the Folk left; that's all I know. The General Enver tried to claim it- instead it fell to us. That's how life is, I suppose."

Carver grunted with effort as the wheel slid in the mud.

"A cure for the world. What does it do?"

"Even the Powers fear it," Creedmoor said. "You know- hold there- you know that the Engines cannot be killed. Nor my former masters. Like a bad idea the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds keep coming back. This thing kills them for good."

"How?"

"That's all I know. That's all anybody told me. I was never privy to the deep secrets, even when I was somebody."

"You don't know?"

"Do I pry into your secrets, Professor?"

"On the count of three," I said, and with a heave we got the back wheel righted.

"We know where it is," he said. "And that alone is enough for us to be hunted all over the world. Line wants it and Gun wants it and we don't intend to let either of them have it."

"You're an altruist, then. No- a profiteer, maybe. So where is it?"

"Buried."

"Somewhere back east," I said. "You said you were going to Jasper, but not stopping there, so further east. Past the Tri-City Territory? And Folk country, right, well, maybe-"

"Shut your mouth, Ransom."

"Maybe you don't know. Maybe I think you don't even know-"

"Maybe you should think more and talk less. Now all right. On the count of three. One, two, push."

Liv reported that the horses were unharmed.

I was not sure whether I believed them or not. Their story had the ring of delusion. I did not have to be a Doctor of Psychology from back east to know that- I was self-taught, having encountered more than enough maniacs on the road to recognize the symptoms. But Creedmoor was who he was, and the incident with the wolves admitted of no ordinary explanation. I did not know what to think.

I tried to catch Carver's eye again to ask what he thought we should do, but when I succeeded he just shrugged and clapped black mud from off his hands.

I asked what they would do with this thing if they found it, and Creedmoor interjected that they would not, because his former masters were on our trail and we would all be dead before another sunrise. He said that it was only his d.a.m.n fool pride that stopped him from just lying down in the mud and waiting for death. And Miss Harper said some things about Peace and the end of War and sweeping away the cobwebs of history and waking from the nightmares of the century gone by, and about the promise of the future and all the sort of things that I was used only to hearing from the less scrupulous kind of preacher or the more ambitious kind of con-artist. It seemed she was sincere, but then I often seem my most sincere when I am only trying to make a sale.

CHAPTER 8.

WHITE ROCK.

It was a handsome town. It was halfway up the mountains that in that part of their range are called the Opals, on the western side. There was a little comma-shaped mountain lake with piercingly blue water, and houses scattered around that, and a winding Main Street, and then more houses rising up rocky slopes and into the pines. Everything was made of pine. There was a pine school house, a pine court house, and a pine church run by a nun with a face as hard as wood and green needle-sharp eyes.

White Rock was joined to the wider world by two forms of commerce-one that sold, one that took. First, it was a logging town. Second, it guarded the pa.s.s across the Opals- travelers coming across the Opals from the east stayed a night in White Rock or re-provisioned there or even if they did not stay it was a rare traveler who got out without paying certain unexpected fees or taxes. Sometimes in the summer rich men from Jasper City or Gibson City came up out of the Territory and into the mountains to hunt or take the air, and though it was winter when we got there White Rock was not so rough or remote or uncivilized as you might expect.

We already knew that we were doomed. Snow had started to fall the day before and the road up to White Rock had been a struggle. When we got to White Rock there was snow drifting in the air, and heaped between the trees and bending down their branches, and the sky was bone-white, and you could not see far in any direction. I will not say that we heard wolves howling in the mountains, because we did not, but there was a sharp wind and with every strange sound of it we imagined the worst. The first man we spoke to in White Rock informed us that the road east was impa.s.sable. Snows had come unseasonably early and unseasonably heavy and we were too late. He saw our faces fall but mistook the reason. "I know," he said, "I know. It's bad for business all round. I have lost money because of it myself."

There were three small hotels on Main Street but only one was open at that late stage of the year. It was called the Grand. There were muddy snowdrifts stacked by the doorway and ripples of ice on the windows and inside there was a fire. On either side of the fireplace was the mounted head of a wolf, which it gave none of us any plea sure to look at. We were not the Grand's only guests- there were a few stranded travelers, including a handful of businessmen, one missionary in retreat, two sad-looking old women who I think were sisters. The rooms were narrow as coffins and had similar angles.

Mr. Carver went walking. Liv arranged for a bath to be drawn. Creedmoor sat by the fire. With one hand he drank, and the other hovered by his gun, and he stared into the fire as if communing with it. This was the gun I had taken from him, and I do not know when he took it back. The money they were spending on drink and bathing and odd-angled rooms was princ.i.p.ally mine and it had been hard-earned but there seemed no point in h.o.a.rding it now.

I went out into White Rock, and walked down Main Street. There was no sign of Mr. Carver. There was not much of anyone on the street at all. All the saddlers and blacksmiths and general stores that at other times of the year served travelers across the Opals were locked and empty.

A man walked into a butcher's store with a sack of something over his shoulder, and we nodded to each other as we pa.s.sed. There was mud and snow on the ground and I kept my hands in my pockets. There was a store that sold thick coats and shoes, but it was closed too and for all I knew I would not need a coat anymore come morning. I felt very sorry for myself.

On the corner where Main Street bent there was a spur of rock, whited over with snow, and next to it was a building with a sign that said it was a bank.

The sign said it was the bank of the opals, and there was a painting of a blue-capped mountain. Below that was another sign, which promised wills written, occasional mail handled, the happy bonds of matrimony forged & annulled, goods p.a.w.ned. It was not a particularly remarkable bank, but I felt sure I had seen it before.

I stood on the street for some time with my hands in my pockets looking confused before I realized that Mr. Carver and I had pa.s.sed through White Rock on our way out west, more than a year ago. I had not stopped for long or noticed much about it. I had been in a big hurry to get wherever I was going. Anyhow it had looked very different then, the mountains had been gray-green and alive and the sky had been blue and you could see for miles west across the plains below.

I remembered that I had strolled down Main Street and into the Bank of the Opals, where I had entrusted to the teller a number of letters, mostly for my sisters Jess, May, and Sue, but also for some creditors back in East Conlan and for a couple of Professors of Science in Gibson City and Jasper and all the way back east, whose names I had plucked out of Encyclopedias.

This was something of a dizzying revelation and for some reason it made me smile. I whistled and looked around and saw things with new eyes and when the dizziness faded I was overcome with sentimentality.

I walked into the Bank. A single teller sat halfway asleep behind a pine counter and a metal grille. He wore a thick horse hair coat and a hat with woolen ear-flaps. I did not recall if he was the same man as the year before, but it pleased me to imagine he was, and I started up a conversation with him like I was a regular visitor to White Rock and just catching up on the gossip. We talked about the weather, and business, and the War, and I asked in a joking way if there was mail for me, and he consulted a big dusty ledger and announced to my surprise that there was. In fact there were four letters. It cost me a dollar to recover them.

One was from a creditor back in East Conlan. It had been there for nearly a year, and its threats now seemed mostly quaint.

The other three were from Jess, May, and Sue. Some of their letters had been there for longer than others, though none of my dear sisters had responded quite so promptly as my creditor.

I had mailed a whole lot of letters to a lot of people over that year I was out on the Rim, but this was the first time I had received a response, and it seemed a kind of miracle, as if I had received communications from the world of the dead, or from the Future.

The Professors had not responded at all. I took that snub in stride and smiled and gladly paid the teller his handling fee and also a generous tip, and he lent me his pen and I sat by the window and wrote: Dear Jess.

This is your brother Harry. I am back in White Rock. It has been a long year and I wrote you some letters but who knows if you got them, except the one I guess marked "White Rock." I am not rich yet, nor am I famous, but the Apparatus has been a big hit in a lot of places and I have had a lot of good luck along with the bad. Right now things look bad. My curiosity got the best of me, like you always said it would. But I am not out of the game yet and we shall see how things go. I was glad to hear that you are in Jasper City now and doing well. I think I always knew you would end up on the stage. I expect we shall see each other again when I get there.

Yours, H.

I wrote the same sort of thing to May and Sue, congratulating Sue on the news of her latest child and May on her latest spiritual advances, then I wrote to my creditor that he might have scared me with that kind of big talk a year ago but no longer. Then I walked out into the street feeling that I had accomplished something.

I had to stop a few people in the street before I found anyone who had seen Mr. Carver. That man was a lawyer, closing up his office, and he advised me to get indoors and by the fire, because the aching of his joints told him that it would be a fearful night. He also acknowledged that from the high window of his office he had seen a stranger answering to Mr. Carver's general description ambling down by the lake.

The lawyer reached into his coat, and took a swig from a silver flask. He said it was for the cold, and offered me a taste. Instead I purchased the whole flask from him. Then I went down toward the water.

I found Mr. Carver leaning against a tree. By then it was nearly dark. I said, "You must be cold."

"No," he said.

"Well. Maybe I am. I've never liked the cold. Give me warm weather and sunlight."

He looked at me, and then out again over the lake. The water was frozen and gray and I could not see the other side of it at all.

I took an experimental sip from the flask, and immediately started to cough. I handed the flask to Carver, who just raised a single thick black eyebrow at it.

"I thought we should drink together," I said. "Under the circ.u.mstances. There's a kind of ritual to it. We never have. Indulge me."

He shrugged, and indulged me.

I said, "Do you think they're telling the truth? The Harpers, I mean."

"They think so."

"About what's hunting them. The Gun and its Agents."

"That?" He nodded. "Yeah."

"I didn't mean," I said. "Well, I mean that I never planned for us to. That is, you understand. I'm groping my way toward an apology, Mr. Carver. I mean to say that I did not intend."

I coughed again. "I don't ordinarily touch drink. Bad for the brain. It has been the wreck of many an ambitious young man. Mr. Baxter says so."

"True enough," he said. "I've seen it happen."

"Well then."

He pa.s.sed the flask back to me and I drank again.

"We were in White Rock before," I said. "On the way out west. A year ago. More than a year. It was not so d.a.m.n cold then."

"One town is about the same as any other."

"I disagree. I have rarely pa.s.sed through any place I didn't consider noteworthy in some way. This town has a first-rate lake and a very decent bank and post office. I wrote letters to my sisters and entrusted them to the teller with the utmost confidence."

I drank again. I felt a little less cold with each swallow, but did not yet feel anything I recognized as inebriation.

"Mr. Carver, do you have family?"

"Yes and no."

"Well, you never speak of them."

"No."

"Excuse me." I took a cautious step out onto the ice and was pleased to find that it held my weight. "A first-rate lake. Mr. Carver, if you have family to write to you should do so. I will advance you the money if you need it."

"No thank you."

"I don't even know how old you are."

"No?"

"I have come to consider you a friend, Mr. Carver."

"Yeah?"

I could not resist the temptation to take a further few steps out onto the ice, slipping a little and extending my arms for balance like a Heavier-Than-Air Vessel of the fixed-wing variety. Then I drank again. The ice continued to hold.

"I'm curious, you know. About you, Mr. Carver, I mean. Your manner invites it. If you wanted to arouse less curiosity you should have told more lies. Or if you'd just said you were on the run from the law I would have overlooked it."

"Not everything has some big secret to it."

I could tell from the closeness of his voice that he'd followed me out onto the ice. I found that very encouraging, and I took a few steps more.

"I wondered once if you might be a Linesman. One of the true men of the Line, born and raised, from one of those awful Stations of the North, in the tunnels beneath the factories, like you hear such awful things about. You have an uncanny knack with machines and you have no small talk. A defector, a deserter, an escapee. If that's what it is I wouldn't mind. What matters is what a man does not where he's from."

"Are you asking?"

"I guess I am. "

"I've lived a long time and traveled. I've learned a lot."

I said nothing, just took a few more steps forward. A little gray snow blew around my face.

"Once," I said, "you told me you had lived among the Folk. Do you remember? After Kenauk. It was when we found that, well, I don't what to call it-"

"A questioning."