oil puddles, past ranks of throbbing machinery. He didn’t even know what it was. He passed the Signal Corps tent, where several shiny new telegraph machines had recently arrived, just barely keeping pace with the new volume of communications.
A Signalman emerged from the tent and came running up with a transcript in his hand. “Sir—Acting Conductor, sir—the woman has been talking to the target again. The device captured the conversation with better accuracy this time, sir, near twenty percent—”
“The potential target, Signalman. Make no assumptions. Anything new?”
“Unclear, sir, as you know he talks in nursery rhymes and we’re uncertain how to decode—”
“No time now. Assault under way. Mr. Nickel, go with him.”
Lowry and Thernstrom pushed on. Residents of old Kloan, under the eyes of Linesmen, loaded gleaming newly made gas rockets onto the back of trucks. Lowry nodded in approval. The Kloanites were looking pale and sickly now, they didn’t take well to the new air, but they were tolerably hard workers when properly directed.
Lowry put his arm round the shoulder of a Kloanite boy.
“Walk with me. The rest of you, get on with it.”
Lowry pushed on through ranks of Linesmen who struggled under the weight of machine guns, two men each and one to hold the ammunition case. Their insignia said they were from Gloriana. They staggered to one side as he passed and lowered their heads in submission.
“See that, boy? That’s good order, that is.”
“Yes, sir.”
The forces now at Lowry’s disposal had doubled since the day he’d taken Banks’s place. More had been promised. But the Enemy was active now in the South and in the East. Agents had destroyed tracks, fomented uprisings, poisoned, burned, committed acts of sabotage and terror. Good; the Enemy was afraid. It meant that Lowry’s reinforcements were delayed, but Lowry was willing to make do with what he had.
So far, he had not been removed from command. No doubt he was being watched.
There were cranes overhead. They lifted concrete walls off flat-bed trucks and slowly lowered them into place around Lowry and Thernstrom and the boy, like a city exploding in reverse. Lowry squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t have seen that in Old Kloan, would you? Wonderful, isn’t it? Progress.”
He passed by a row of Linesmen bent over the innards of black motorcycles. His mood was much improved now, the bustle and fear and respect of his men had put him in good spirits, not to mention the chemicals were now having their full energizing effect. “Good work, that man. Well done. Will they be ready?”
The Linesmen snapped to attention. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
“Good, good. Forward, forward.”
Lowry modeled his good-fellow manner on old moving-picture images of Mr. Clay, the old Master of Angelus Station. They used to pack the children into the moving-picture vaults, back in Angelus, when Lowry was a boy, to learn the Line’s Purpose in glorious pure black-and-white. There little Lowry saw Clay: that jerking gray screen-phantom in muttonchops and long black tailcoat striding through the halls and shadows and shuddering machines of Angelus with a glad word for every busy soot-black worker.
“GOOD FELLOW, GOOD FELLOW”
. . . the moving-picture title card had read.
MASTERS OF INDUSTRY.
Stark white block letters on deep inky black.
Of course, Clay was long gone, removed, and all those moving-pictures gone, too, burned probably, and his name forbidden, and quite right, too; it didn’t do for a mere man, even a man like that, to get too popular. Still, in secret, Lowry remembered him. Clay had a useful way about him. “Good fellow, good fellow, strong arm there,” Lowry said, just as Clay used to. “Keep it going. . . .”
A Signalman came running up, disturbing Lowry’s daydream.
“Sir.”
“What? Good fellow. What?”
“Scouts report they’re moving, sir.”
“Do they know we know their location?”
“Not clear, sir.”
“Which way?”
“Northeast. Across open country, parallel to the road.”
“Good. Fine. Good. Then we have them. As you were.”
Lowry realized that he was still holding the Kloanite boy, who was trembling and staring at his feet.
“Hey. Hey, boy. Look up.”
“Sir.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen here?”
“Sir.”
“We’re going to kill a bunch of the Enemy. But that’s nothing to do with you. Let me tell you what’s going to happen to Kloan.”
. . . because Lowry, he explained, was only the point man. That was how the Line worked. Military forces went ahead to scout the path, clear out enemies. Behind them come and will come and will keep coming the factories. The smokestacks and forges. The silent soot-smeared foundry men straining in their hundreds and