“I never learned the identity of the Agent who saved me. I imagine he died. We have a tendency to do that. But two years later, I walked full of pluck and resolve and despair into an opium den in Gibson City, where one Mr. Dandy Fanshawe was known to be a regular; I was drunk and angry, but that’s no excuse; and I . . .”
Creedmoor was silent for a long time. Eventually Liv spoke.
“And?”
He glanced warily up. “And? And nothing. What happens after that is inevitable.”
“You were an idealist.”
He shook his head under the brim of his hat. “A very poor idealist.”
“And did your service to the Gun—?”
“Liv. You’re a fine listener, Liv. A professional skill, I assume. And I’m too fond of my own voice. I’m a vain man. I know it. It’s not the least of my flaws. And the Guns are silent out here, Liv, the echoes of their Song cannot reach us, and so I have a great deal of time to devote to my thoughts, and so—”
He pushed back his brim and gave her a sudden unshadowed grin. “Dangerous notions, unsafe even to think. Good night, Liv.”
“Creedmoor—”
“Good night. The General needs cleaning, I think.”
CHAPTER 33
FORWARD THE GLORIOUS PURPOSE
If the Doctor’s signaling device could be trusted, then it seemed the Agent had taken the low road west. There wasn’t much out in the uncreated world that could be trusted, but Lowry’s faith in Line engineering hadn’t entirely deserted him yet; and besides, it seemed right. The Agent had found a valley—a cut, a cleft, a crevice, a ditch, a gutter—a sewer—and was squirming wormlike along it out to the Western Sea. Disgusting.
Lowry took the high road—that is, he led his men along the heights, the clifftops, high over the valley, where he hoped he’d be hidden from the Agent’s wolflike ears and eyes. This required some self-sacrifice on the part of Lowry’s men—the winds up on the heights were terrible. They froze, burned, stung. Sometimes they carried improbable scents—salt, spice, engine oil, fire—things Lowry couldn’t name—things that woke powerful homesick emotions but, in fact, were only meaningless—misplaced and drifting scraps of creation.
Lowry slogged forward, left-foot-right-foot-left, and the wind blew along the ridges and whipped the dust up into mad shadow shapes and blew right through his fucking brain.
Lowry was falling apart. The men were, too.
A few days ago, Subaltern Collier came to Lowry and told him, in a whisper, that they were officially crossing the point of no return; that if they pressed on, they would not have enough food in their packs for the return.
“We have our orders, Mr. Collier,” Lowry said. “We’ll hunt or something if we must.”
“Whose orders, sir?”
“Orders, Mr. Collier.”
No return. That was the last straw; that was the last fucking straw. That opened some cracks in everyone’s casing, all right.
Shortly after that, Subaltern Thernstrom approached him to say, “The men are frightened.”
And Lowry said: “Good. So am I.”
Subaltern Collier came up with a plan: If some of them made camp, and some went back in shifts, came back with supplies, organized a supply chain of sorts, they could perhaps all make it back. Lowry waved him away with a grunt and a scowl. Two days later, Collier came back with a new plan, suitably tinkered with to take into account the fresh wilderness miles they’d stumbled across since last time. Under more normal operating circumstances, Lowry would have had a sneaking admiration for Collier’s mechanical persistence, his careful calculating mind, though he would still have filed whatever reports necessary to have the jumped-up bastard demoted or arrested. No one goes back. As it was, Lowry just stumped on, hunched, lost in his own thoughts, which were bleak and gray.
The men chattered behind him. A general breakdown of discipline loomed. How many were still sound, and how many were broken parts, rattling loose? Lowry didn’t know. He no longer trusted his Subalterns to keep him informed on the mood of the men. Collier had his own agenda. Thernstrom talked to himself. Gibb had a look of wild-eyed sweaty-faced excitement that couldn’t be trusted. Lowry should have had all the Subalterns shot, but he couldn’t spare them.
It was different for the men, who at least had Lowry to lead them. Lowry had nothing, was out there all alone. The silence of his masters’ Song was more than he could handle.
He had no idea how much he muttered to himself all day.