progress with the General. More through blind luck and patience than any great cleverness on my part, admittedly, but still progress—we have a bond, Mr. President, he has come to trust me. To need me. Something living in him reaches out. This is my analysis, do you understand? I do not speak idly. I have told you: I have reason to believe that he may remember something, that he may know something, that he may have found something, that frightens the Gun and the Line alike. That may perhaps be a danger to them. A weapon of the First Folk, which may put an end to the spirits that drive this world mad. An end to the Great War! It is essential that we—”
“There is no end in this world to war, madam.”
The President said this quite calmly. Liv was flushed, sweating. His tone surprised her. It occurred to her that she had nearly forgotten how to talk to anyone other than Creedmoor.
“What reason do you have to believe this, madam?”
“I . . . Creedmoor told me so. But—”
“Precisely. Madam—I shall speak plainly—is it any wonder that we do not entirely trust you? Please don’t take offense, madam; we are very grateful for what you’ve done for us. You can hardly imagine how grateful. You are an agent of providence, they’re saying, out in the town. My citizens are saying this. Certainly you are an agent of something. The General is restored to his proper place, and we will take care of him. What matters now is that you help us. That you show us you are willing to help us, do you see? That you tell us all you know of this Agent you traveled with. Wait; collect your thoughts. Be sure you are ready to tell all. All his filthy secrets.”
A snarl of loathing passed across the President’s face. The man’s smile wrestled its way back into place and he regarded her evenly; only his eyes betrayed the illusion of calm. “I want my planners and my officers and my War Secretary to hear this. Good men; don’t be worried.”
There was a heavy brass bell on Hobart’s desk. He rang it. There was a sound of booted feet approaching in the halls outside.
CHAPTER 41
A GUEST AT DINNER
They found Liv a room in Captain Morton’s house. Morton’s first wife had died—at the end of a long and productive life, Morton assured Liv, and of no contagious cause—and he had left her room empty, building a new bedroom for his new wife.
Morton’s house was larger than most in New Design. This was, Morton assured her, the result of his own hard work. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was among the first to go forward into the wilderness, or that he had been much decorated in battle.
“Though,” he allowed, “Not knowin’ how things are done here, ma’am, you might well think so. New Design bestows no honors, ma’am. New Design neither gives nor takes away from what its citizens build with their own honest sweat. That’s the foundation of all good government.”
“Is it, really? Thank you, Captain.”
It was hardly what Liv would have called a bedroom. It was a little square grotto of rough logs. It was dark. Like everything in New Design, it felt rather like a storeroom in a military campsite. It contained a few sentimental treasures. On a log-hewn table, in thick dust, were a silver hairbrush and dried-up glass perfume bottle and a silver hand mirror, which contained no glass. A shelf on the opposite wall held seven yellowing chapbooks: two works of religious instruction and one discourse (illustrated with machines, with pendulums, with beehives, with heart valves) on the power of the principles of divided government to channel the healthy industry of . . . And four romance novels, one of which was the very one Creedmoor carried with him. She dropped it like a snake. Guiltily she placed it back on the shelf.
She lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. The bed was made of wood and stretched hide. A few months ago, she would have regarded it as no kind of bed at all; now the comfort of it amazed her. She was quite unable to stay awake.
Liv dined that night with Captain Morton and his new wife. The second Mrs. Captain Morton—her name was Sally—was much younger than the Captain. She must have come to New Design almost as an infant—a strange life, Liv thought,